Several editorials have recently been published in major newspapers making sure we all know what the real cause of the War was: Slavery. Locally, Gary Dickson reaffirmed this point of view in an editorial entitled “Nothing to Celebrate.”

This view typically hinges on two premises: First, that President Abraham Lincoln was committed “to end slavery in America,” and second, that when the Deep South seceded, they referred to their belief in the inferiority of blacks and their rightly being slaves as justification. Essentially, the idea is that the South was wrong, the North was right, and it is wrong for Americans today to celebrate Confederate heritage.

But these editorials miss the mark. Often they either conveniently leave out important facts or distort them to prove their point.

One example of many is the idea that Abraham Lincoln's primary focus was to free the slaves. In reality, Lincoln promised to maintain slavery where it was. He wrote: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race.”

Was this idle political posturing? Not at all. Little known to most of modern America was something called the “Corwin Amendment.” This was a proposed Constitutional amendment (intended to be the 13th, ironically) that stated: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

Abraham Lincoln endorsed this amendment, and it passed Congress after the Deep South seceded.

Shockingly, Lincoln formally endorsed this amendment in his First Inaugural. It was sent to the states for ratification, where it awaits a vote to this very day! (It has yet to be withdrawn.) Three states have already voted to approve it (Ohio, Maryland and Lincoln's own Illinois.) Unbelievable, but true!

Little known too is that Lincoln's famed Emancipation Proclamation was carefully worded to preserve slavery everywhere it existed under federal control. It only attempted to free those slaves that were under Confederate jurisdiction (thus is actual practice, freeing hardly any slaves at all). Slaves in Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana were kept as slaves throughout Lincoln's life. They were not freed until long after Lincoln was dead and buried (by the eventually approved modified 13th Amendment.) So much for Lincoln's commitment to end slavery!

I won't go into quotes of Lincoln regarding blacks, but they were just as racist and incendiary as anything a southerner said at the time. Some of his quotes regarding blacks would make your skin crawl. Suffice to say here that Lincoln's solution to the “Freeman Problem” was to “ship them back to Africa.” The African country of Liberia was populated by freed slaves, shipped back by organizations that Lincoln endorsed and supported.

So when you read statements like “Abraham Lincoln's promise was to end slavery in America,” it is important to get the rest of the story to put things in a proper balance.

Google “Corwin Amendment,” “Emancipation Proclamation,” “Lincolns racist quotes” and “history of Liberia.” For extra credit look up “The Morrill Tariff” to decide whether taxation may have something to do with the War. Read up on these, and then re-read the “it was all about slavery” editorials. You will read them in a new light.

And it begs the question: If Lincoln and the North were willing to guarantee slavery forever in the South, then what was the real reason for a war that took more than 600,000 lives and destroyed half of the country?

In every conflict, the winners write the history. Have we been given a sanitized view of the Civil War?

We will never get to the truth as long as we are fed selected damning quotes from one side while damning quotes and actions of the other side are swept under the rug.

Don't accept at face value what you read regarding the causes of The War. Use the Internet and the library to dig beneath the “accepted” understanding. Verify, research and verify again. You still might not agree with those who celebrate the Confederacy, but you will have a far better understanding of what is motivating them, and it's not a yearning for returning to slavery.

These issues are being discussed in-depth at the Redwood Empire Civil War Roundtable that is meeting monthly. The next meeting will be held Feb. 1 at the Tallman Hotel in Upper Lake. The meeting starts at 6:15 p.m. There is no charge.

Phil Smoley lives in Lakeport, Calif.

They then tend to consider the analysis of such ideas irrelevant, and prefer to think in terms of what they now define to be human nature, such as they perceive it.

They risk no longer understanding that their every thoughts and actions are rooted in concepts and beliefs that originate in a chosen worldview, and that to change the world, one needs to become conscious of and to change his worldview, to shift her focus and consciousness.

One such urgently needed transformation would nudge humanity to abandon the habit of fierce competition, which has historically been proven to lead to patriarchal forms of religions and governments, and to embrace the more natural and spiritually relevant model of cooperation, which found expression in matriarchal cultures and societies before they were brutally crushed by patriarchies centuries ago.

It is indeed not a coincidence that women have been oppressed for many centuries by patriarchal drives for dominant power and control, and are to this day in too many nations.

Such unhealthy obsession with power is not generated by hormones however, it arises from fear. Unnatural ideas lead to fear, which is an unnatural condition when sustained over a long period of time, and fear inspires the creation of the types of dogmas, ideologies, beliefs that ultimately appear to validate this fear and all it requires, such as greed, control, authority, might, aggression, war, and the subjugation and ruthless exploitation of those who are deemed weak because vulnerable to predation and coercion.

History proves that humanity is capable of temporarily or permanently legitimizing all acts of murders committed by the state or by religious authorities, all genocides, slavery, persecution, torture and war in the name of specific ideas and beliefs. Not so long ago, millions died because they were considered subhuman by those who claimed to be the master race.

Today the air, the water, the land are dying, polluted to the extreme and throughout the world by the highly toxic chemical and industrial by-products of a “master” civilization, because within the context of such a now global civilization power is deemed more important than life itself.

Consequently, anyone who stands for the earth is said to stand against progress, as were said to be the Native people of this continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, and as are still said to be all remaining indigenous populations today.

Indeed those who would rather love than rape and abuse the earth have seemingly no place and are not welcome in a world made into a battleground by the deluded and fearful patriarchal mind, the mind that is so desperately attached to the obsolete and grotesque idea of dominion as to be willing to sacrifice all for power.

That mind also fantasizes that the solution to the central problem of civilization, to the destruction of the natural order by greed, power and insensitive technologies will be found in the second coming of science or religion, in a migration of the human race to another planet or in a rapture.

Our human world will no survive this ongoing assault against nature, against what is called the environment, much longer, and can only be saved if women reclaim their power worldwide, not the power to blindly compete and overcome as men have been taught and conditioned to think and act, but the power to be, the power to live intelligently in cooperation and through communication rather than in opposition and through conflict.

Why should women save the world, why must they take on this responsibility?

Because it seems that, when it comes to killing and dying, men are by far the experts and always willing, but when it comes to nurturing life and living, women are so much more experienced and qualified.

If we are to choose to live on as a species, we then have to collectively choose to place our fate in the hand of the more skilled gender that, let’s be honest, has not yet been given a real chance under centuries of obtuse global patriarchal rule.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.

Business is business, and the No. 1 business of the first world is the manufacture and sale of weapons.

So if you are living in the third world and we either kill you directly or your village happens to be wiped out by our weapons which we supplied to the dictatorship that rules your nation, do not make the mistake of becoming troublemakers by adopting radical ideologies, it is just bad for business.

You see, we do not care who kills or rapes or tortures whom. We never have, we never will. It is irrelevant to us because we usually manage to profit politically and economically from all sides, never neglecting any opportunity to do so. Our only concern is about people or organizations who actually threaten our profits, our control and influence, and our cheap and easy access to your resources.

So do not take it personally when your son or your wife are tortured and killed in front of you by paramilitary forces that have been trained, armed and financed by us, as happened in Guatemala for example. It is just business, understand? We hope you do, and God bless.

What is it, you are still whining about injustice, about genocide?

Look here, someone has to bleed for our economies to soar and for our first world dominant positions to be maintained. And we have a privileged class to protect. You are not called the Third World for nothing, because in terms of survival, human rights or anything else you come last. So if our weapons are to be used on anyone, they might as well be used on you, since you have demonstrated, ever since we invaded your nations in our glorious colonial days, a great aptitude for dying.

While you get agitated because living under abject poverty, inequity and injustice, tyrants rise to the occasion to keep you in line through terror and to do business with us, and these tyrants are almost always gold mines for us.

Why you ask? Listen, don’t push it, we are loosing our patience with all your questions.

Tyrants are gold mines because they keep the world out of balance and in a state of war or heavily armed peace, and obviously legitimize our almighty power and our research and development programs for the deployment of ever more lethal weapon systems, such as the space weapons program which is meant to control you, the restless starving Third World masses, and which was another great idea from Nazi Germany by the way, to whom we owe so very much.

Furthermore, tyrants are usually on our side because fighting like us against democracy or people power, to facilitate the rape of the world resources by our powerful and unstoppable corporations, that are themselves financed by the powerful finance capitalists known as banking interests, which are indistinguishable from what we call our national interests.

However your dictators, most of whom are puppets propped up, armed, controlled and financed by our governments, can on occasion become our enemies, like Saddam Hussein or Manual Noriega, when they disobey us and start tyrannizing on their own, which not only is against all the rules but shows blatant ingratitude.

So you see we cannot loose, stealing your natural resources by causing you to go deep into debt and become dependent upon us, a technique we are also using on our own hapless people to keep them in voluntary slavery, in the lines of endless production and consumption through the creation of artificial needs, and by manufacturing and selling the weapons that oppress your people and destroy your nations.

Now, at long last, do you see the straight line to the bank? Yes? So quit questioning our cultural superiority, and be good and keep your families in the line of fire, so that we may test our new war games and sustain our high standards of living.

Have a nice day.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.

There have been articles and commentaries and news clips galore blaming everyone from Sarah Palin to Jan Brewer to Sharon Angle to the Tea Party to Barack Obama.

The main focus of the blame seems to be the use of rhetoric in political circles that uses violent imagery, such as the poster Sarah Palin posted on Facebook, showing political opponents in a rifle’s crosshairs.

There are many other instances that have been brought up, but since that’s not the heart of this piece I won’t list them all here.

The main belief being put forth is that people in the public arena are being careless with their words, have used threatening imagery in their public speeches, are to blame for Jared Loughner’s actions on Saturday and must be held accountable for it.

There has been a backlash too, people saying that Loughner was a lone crazy man, solely responsible for his actions. There’s a lot of support for that angle too.

Reports are coming in that he was mentally ill, had been kicked out of college and asked not to return until he had had a psychological evaluation, and that he was enthralled by “Mein Kampf,” the Communist Manifesto and Nazi propaganda. But again, placing blame isn’t quite the point I’m trying to make here.

Loughner, as the man holding the gun, is the responsible party. Whatever his influences were, he has to bear the burden of his actions.

That his direct influences do not seem to be what people initially were decrying as his influences, i.e., Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, etc., doesn’t mean that they aren’t a contributing factor. I think people jumped to that conclusion because there is a sort of sense to it.

Maybe Loughner didn’t spend a lot of time researching Sarah Palin’s poster, but that doesn’t mean that some of the rhetoric that is so commonplace now didn’t filter down to him, making him think that shooting someone you disagree with is an acceptable solution to the disagreement.

Was it just Sarah Palin though? No. Was it just Sarah Palin and Jan Brewer and Sharon Angle and the Tea Party and Barack Obama? No. Was it just people in the public arena? No.

I contend that we all, as a people, have allowed our speech to be littered with violent imagery and vulgarisms that we now accept as normal. I think collectively we know it’s wrong, our sensibilities are struggling with it and this tragic incident is giving us an opportunity to say “enough.”

Remember George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV” routine? (Look it up, I’m not going to list them here.) Out of the seven, two are no longer banned on American television, four are allowed on British telly, movies use them liberally, and all are in common everyday use all around us.

In the Old West, to use the phrase “Son of a b*tch” would be taken so personally it would likely get you shot. Now people say it when they stub their toe. It’s all so casual. No one seems to notice or care if there are small children around to hear it.

And with the advent of the Internet, where everyone gets to speak their mind, we see the filth in those minds in the comments section below any news article.

My husband once wrote an article posted in this very news source about the controversial subject of genetically engineered food, and one reader apparently disagreed with his stance.

The reader could have chosen to say, “I disagree with your position, and believe you are misinformed,” but instead chose to say, “You’re wrong, you f***ing idiot!” and then suggested my husband drink anti-freeze and die.

Why the vulgar speech? Why the personal attack? Why the violent suggestion, over an article about … food? And comments like this are common all over the Internet – this was not an isolated incident.

It is not just people in the public arena who are to blame for this climate of violent rhetoric we live in. After all, the ones on stage are a reflection of the masses. We all need to reflect on our contribution to the morass.

Common sense tells us that the more we let fly with our words, the more that disturbed people such as Loughner, who may not have the mental filter or discipline to keep his feelings just to his words, will think that violent speech approves violent action.

We all need to reflect on the things we say, and how we say them. All things can be expressed in different ways, every idea may be conveyed with alternative means … see what I did there? I said the same thing two ways. We don't have to resort to vulgarity and violent imagery to get our point across.

We can, and should, clean up our communications, both our public officials and the private sector – which isn't so private anymore.

No, folks, I’m not saying we need to stop talking. I’m not trying to curtail freedom of speech. I’m requesting that we all return to civility, think before we speak, and if we disagree, disagree politely. Thank you for reading.

Lacy Christensen lives in Clearlake Oaks, Calif.

Although billed as “informational,” the presentation (by Ft Bragg developer Jim Burns with the assistance of a consultant from Rancho Mirage) consisted primarily of a sales pitch for tapping into the Clearlake Redevelopment Agency's remaining $7 million to subsidize the police department – even though that money is desperately needed to revitalize the community's economic base, and even though, as pointed out by former city councilman Roy Simons and former planning commissioner Rick Mayo, such use of RDA funding is highly questionable from a legal perspective.

The misunderstandings started with the capacity crowd, most of whom were wearing brand new “Support Clearlake Police” T-shirts and had apparently turned out on this blustery evening on the assumption that the meeting would revolve around a proposal to disband the police department and turn its functions over to the county sheriff – a notion that may or may not have merit, but was not on the agenda.

The presentation then continued the theme, starting with the delusion that Clearlake is Oakland (an error pounced upon by many of those present), and that a high tech combination of remotely controlled cameras and an interactive Web site could put an end to a supposed crime wave.

Underlying these assertions was the assumption that the police department is underfunded despite dedicated Measure P sales tax support, a generous budget that consumes more than half of all municipal expenditures, high salaries for top officers and abundant overtime payments.

Most basic of all, the argument rested on the fundamentally flawed premise that because economic deprivation tends to be associated with a comparatively high crime rate it therefore follows that reducing criminal activities will result in prosperity, and consequent attainment of redevelopment agency core objectives of reduced blight and increased property taxes. This flight of logical fancy precisely reverses the actual chain of causation.

It might help to draw a lesson from the ecological concept of “limiting factors,” which examines an impoverished habitat to determine just which element is most lacking.

For example, if birds are scarce because of a shortage of nesting places, there's no point in increasing the food supply; if forage is unavailable, providing extra water won't help a depressed population rebound.

To improve the prospects for a given species, it's necessary to determine the specific limiting factor which prevents it from thriving, and to concentrate resources and efforts on expanding that limitation.

As Clearlake's residents have pointed out over and over again, the single element that hinders prosperity the most is antiquated, dilapidated or nonexistent infrastructure – dirt roads, potholes, lack of streetlights and sidewalks, inadequate parking, etc.

This impairment is particularly devastating in the Lakeshore Drive business district, where it is impeding the development of the visitor-based economy that offers the city's best chance for a brighter future.

In Clearlake, infrastructure is the limiting factor, and improving infrastructure is by far the most appropriate use of the redevelopment agency's precious resources.

Local voters reaffirmed this message resoundingly in the Nov. 2 city council election, and are surely expecting the newly formed council to act upon it.

Victoria Brandon lives in Lower Lake, Calif.

I've decided to write a few essays about current events. This is not a diatribe against Christianity, it is an attempt to set the historical record straight.

The first current event of importance is the mobilization of American Christian fundamentalism against a “foreign” religion; in this case Islam.

This is as traditionally American as apple pie. Numerous modern presidents have sought to sustain the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation for their own political reasons and, in today's divided America, it is again a useful tool in getting angry, disenchanted Americans to renew their discontent at having a black president with apparently liberal leanings trying to direct the course of the Nation.

One of the 14 recently identified pillars of fascism is when religion is consistently mentioned and utilized by a government’s leadership or opposition, to bolster its support and justify its actions.

Numerous examples of this type of social bigotry can be found in our checkered past but the most recent is the attempt by many of today’s conservative fundamentalists to try to depict the Founding Fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

An example of this is an excerpt from the Web sit of Barbara Martin. “According to the Preamble to the Constitution for the United States of America (1787) the founders were 'We the People.' 'We the People' were all free, white and of the original stock of Europe … They were Christians, recognizing, acknowledging and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord, the one and only God and their only Sovereign, and the Nation they ordained and established is a Christian Nation.”

This is patently untrue.

Having escaped from the state-established religions of Europe, only seven out of every 100 people in the 13 colonies belonged to a church when the Declaration of Independence was signed.

It was not that the Founding Fathers were hostile to religion; they simply did not believe that religion was a pillar of liberty. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and what they viewed as the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.

It is important to note that the first Constitutional Conventions opened without prayer and both Jefferson and Madison refused to utilize public prayer even when pressured to do so.

Here is what some of the Founding Fathers wrote about Bible-based Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson: “I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

Jefferson also wrote, “Christianity … (has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. … Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.”

Jefferson referred to the Bible as a “dunghill.” “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

John Adams: “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!”

“Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?” Adams wrote.

Also attributed to him: “The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”

Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797. The treaty was written during the Washington administration, and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the Senate, and each senator received a printed copy.

At that time it was only the third occasion a vote was unanimous and there is no record of public outcry or complaint in subsequent editions of the papers. Article 11 states: “The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

Thomas Paine: “Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses ... I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).”

“It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible,” Paine wrote.

He also wrote, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of … Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

James Madison: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together,” and “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

Another of Madison's writings: “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

“What influence, in fact, have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society?” Madison asked. “In many instances, they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.”

George Washington: The first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian and championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion.

When John Murray (a Universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment.

On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to attend.

Ethan Allen: “That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.”

Allen noted that he was generally “denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”

When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised, “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of nature.”

Benjamin Franklin: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion … has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.”

No one categorically disputes the faith of the Founding Fathers. To speak of inalienable Rights being endowed by a Creator certainly shows sensitivity to our spiritual selves.

What is surprising is that fundamentalist Christians think the Founding Fathers' faith had anything to do with the Bible. Without exception, the faith of our Founding Fathers was deist, not theist. It was best expressed earlier in the Declaration of Independence, when they spoke of “the Laws of Nature” and of
“Nature's God.”

To be sure, Islam and Christianity share a contentious past, but to insist that the Country favor one religion over another is at odds with the Constitution.

On the other hand, it is very much in keeping with the dissatisfaction of those who imagined themselves superior to all – racially, morally, socially, politically. How far the once mighty have fallen; brought down by arrogance and greed, they churn and stir the seeds of insurrection rather than join their brothers and sisters in perfecting one Nation.

James BlueWolf lives in Nice, Calif.