As we start the first week after Thanksgiving, two stories jump out.
The first is that the Reverend George M. Docherty, of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, Presbyterian minister and an icon of American lore, died at his home on Thanksgiving Day at age 97.
It was Docherty’s famed February 1954 sermon as pastor at the Nation’s Capital’s New York Avenue First Presbyterian Church that convinced President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower to push Congress to get the words “under God” added to the American Pledge of Allegiance.
Requiesat in pacem eternam.
The band Coldplay’s recent album, “Viva la Vida,” has a mournful song that says: “Those who are dead are not dead, they’re just living in my head… You thought you might be a ghost, you didn’t get to heaven, but you made it close.”
Well, Coldplay has a nice sound but their worldview stinks.
People who are not mortal sinners do go to heaven and their spirits live on forever. That’s just my belief from biblical scripture.
Jesus Christ himself went to the tomb of Lazarus of Bethany with Martha after Lazarus had been dead four days and raised him back to life, according to John’s Bible gospel.
According to the New American Standard Bible’s version of John’s gospel, Jesus told Martha on arriving after Lazarus had died, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me shall live even if he dies.”
The King James version of the Bible quotes the conversation between Jesus and Martha this way, according to disciple John:
Jesus: “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha: “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus: “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” Martha: “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.” (John 11:23-27).
The second unfolding story is that incoming President Barack Obama, labeled by columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell as “our first motivational speaker president,” is putting together an impressive coalition of advisers and presumptive appointees to run his government, despite the reaction of some seasoned political commentators that the president-elect’s named team so far is “Clintonesque.”
Bob Tyrrell put it this way in a piece headlined “Public Nuisances”:
“He has not shied away from bringing former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers onto his economic team as head of his National Economic Council.
“Summers was a proper critic of Freddie and Fannie, having noted this past summer that "the illusion that the companies were doing virtuous work made it impossible to build a political case for serious regulation." This virtuous work was extending mortgages to those who could not afford those mortgages. The toxic mortgages were then bundled in with healthy mortgages and sold around the world by Wall Street geniuses like some enormous chain letter whose day of reckoning came some months ago.
“The endeavor was a fantasy that had to end badly, and so it has.Yet at a certain level, the constituent elements of the Democratic Party are given to fantasy and excess.
“Consider the most vocal critics of Summers. They are not bankers or economists. They are feminists, often feminist scientists, who forced him out of the presidency of Harvard for his recognition that women of genius are not as plentiful as men of genius in the sciences and math. Now, what he cited is a fact.
“Summers drew no invidious conclusions and offered no program that would limit the number of lady scientists. He just noted the data in a forum supposedly open to free discourse. Kaboom -- the women of the fevered brow drove him from office. Remind me not to read a book aloud in Harvard Yard.
“Now, in this time of economic crisis, the women of the fevered brow attempted to keep Summers out of the Obama government despite his demonstrated economic acumen. And remember these feminists claim to be a force for justice and fairness. How long do they want to ban Summers from public life?
“It was rumored that Obama wanted Summers back as head of Treasury. Perhaps the angry feminists kept Summers out of his old office.
“The man the president-elect has announced as his secretary of treasury, Timothy Geithner, is probably a suitable replacement. The economic team Obama is assembling strikes me as pretty good, but the way it was assembled is a bit worrisome. Are all the fanatics in the Democratic Party going to be able to get a hearing with this president?
“He is going to have to maintain both feet on the ground in the months ahead. The delusional malcontents that a Democratic presidential candidate courts in an election can cause a Democratic administration grave problems.
“That brings to mind the visuals that the president-elect is using when he addresses the American people. He appears enhaloed by American flags, not one or two but a whole ring of flags. Moreover, he speaks from a lectern proclaiming ‘The Office of the President Elect.’
“In point of fact, there is no Office of the President Elect, and Obama is not even in an office. He is on a stage. Arguably, a stage has been his office during much of his public life, given the fact that he will be America's first motivational speaker to become president.
“Actually, I doubt that this is the point Obama is trying to make. He is engaging in theater. Yet this dramatic setting is implausible. According to statute, he will not actually be president-elect until the Electoral College meets on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December (Dec. 15 this year) to elect him according to the votes cast Nov. 4.
“My advice to our incoming president is to avoid the implausible stage effects. There is plenty of drama out there, for instance a real war and a real economic crisis. Now he has appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to be chairman of a new presidential advisory board to oversee our emergence from this economic mess.
“Volcker is one of the great figures of his generation, known for slaying inflation in the early 1980s and a dozen other contributions to the commonweal. It is a sign that our first motivational speaker president might actually know what he is talking about -- when he is talking seriously.”
We’ll see whether the first “motivational speaker” president has what it takes, and can carry us from the Bush era to a better era, as Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden have promised, without violating Coldplay’s conclusion that “Those who are dead are not dead,” and that there is a true American vision of “One nation under God” with a promise of eternal life for all.
Space shuttle Endeavor’s recently ended wonderful successful mission to refurbish and enlarge the international space station certainly gave us renewed hope that is so. No lives lost, just a toolbag.
Mission accomplished. And those who are dead are not dead. They live within us as we carry on.
