Say what anyone will of the good points of the show, some of the good films, why wasn’t there a terrorist attack on the Oscars? Because our Muslim enemies knew the show would be a propaganda coup for their cause. “Hey, don’t we keep telling you America is morally bankrupt and a nation glorifying sex, violence, and perversion!” We’ve come a long way since songs like “It Might as well be Spring” and films like “Gigi” were winning Oscars, since Sandra Dee was traded in for Brittney Spears.

Hitting people is wrong. And children are people! That is a good thing to keep in mind at all times. The large sign out in front of my place “IT SHOULDN’T HURT TO BE A CHILD!” means exactly that. And many people have thanked me for that reminder. Certainly a parent can lash out in anger and actually hurt their child. It is unforgivable, but it happens. And the loving parent will properly damn themselves for having lost their temper in such a fashion. The reminder I have posted is one we all need to have before us at all times.

While discussing my sign out front with a Jewish friend some time ago, one who had survived Hitler’s Germany, I asked her what might have been the result of good people posting signs in Germany when Jews were being targeted “IT SHOULDN’T HURT TO BE A JEW!” She was flabbergasted! “Why,” she replied, “I don’t think anyone thought of that, and if they had I doubt anyone would have had the courage to do such a thing.”

I’m inclined to believe those like George Washington, Elizabeth Stanton, and Sergeant York never thought of themselves as courageous. The proverb comes to mind, “Let another man praise thee, and not thine own lips.” Well, I’m more often damned than praised, but I have been around long enough to know better than to condemn those who take their own lives despite the fact it sometimes takes more courage to live than to die. My elderly Jewish friend certainly understood that.

Among what some would consider oddities in my library is an 1892 edition of “In Ole Virginia” by Thomas Nelson Page, publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons. The volume I have is one of the most beautiful examples of the bookmaker’s craft; handsomely bound, gilded, embossed with Cameo motif on the front cover center; carefully stitched with thin bookmark sewed in, an onionskin page inserted to protect a solitary W. L. Sheppard etching. For lovers of finely crafted books this small volume is a real delight to see and hold in your hands.

The Page family can be traced back to Jamestown in 1650 and both the Nelson and Page families grew to prominence in the arts, business, and politics, T. N. Page having a particularly illustrious career. However, being a southern gentleman his roots were in the antebellum South and his collection of stories while showing Page’s poetically masterful command of the English language attempts to capture that period of history in the Negro dialect of the time as well, which makes them difficult reading. But for an authentic recounting of actual events and people of the era he describes, Page’s writing is truly remarkable.

Opening the book you read: “To MY PEOPLE. This fragmentary record of their life is dedicated.” The people to whom Page is referring are those representing the finest of the old southern families whose descendants continued to uphold the best of the traditions and fine manners of the “Old South.” Of course, today the phrase “My people” is not allowed of Caucasians, only everyone that is not Caucasian.

While Page was a prolific writer, his works growing to eighteen volumes, In Ole Virginia is his finest attempt to authentically portray the Old South. The stories while difficult to read in the dialect Page attempts to use reflecting the Negro idiom of the era, you are transported by the stories told in such a fashion that you quickly forget the present and become engrossed in that time long ago Margaret Mitchell called “Gone With The Wind.”

Though there be “good” wars and “bad” wars, though winners write history and defend the difference and as Ma Joad and her son Tom affirmed the bad guys “need killin’,” to the rational mind war is the ultimate lunacy of our species, and I often refer to the Civil War as “Lincoln’s War” because it was unnecessary, as the more honest of historians like Professor Claude G. Bowers points out in his definitive work on the subject titled “The Tragic Era.”

But while wars evidence the lunacy of our species en masse the lunacy of individuals is evidenced by the antics of politicians. The Supreme Court is going to decide the issue of police chases. Are they going to tell the cops they can no longer give chase? What message will that send to criminals? But every time such a chase causes injury or death to either criminals or the innocent there are the lawyers lining up to sue. We recently had a politician in California that wanted a law to make criminals of those that spank their children, and now there is one in New York that wants to make using the “n” word a criminal offense. Well, to be on the side of the angels I oppose the beating of children and I oppose racial epithets of every kind. But at what point does a spanking become a beating and a racial term becomes hatred?

There is to be sure a slippery slope involved with all attempts to legislate the conduct of police agencies, to legislate morality including speech, and fortunately cooler heads often prevail. But there is no getting around the fact some things have an emotional part in the equation of the making of laws. A parent is not always guilty of brutalizing a child by spanking, though I support banning such a thing in all schools and anywhere else that does not directly and physically involve the parent, nor does the use of racial terms always betray a racist. And are we to “burn” the books by Page and Clemens because of their use of the “n” word? Of course not, but that does not excuse the use of the word intended as a racial epithet.

Some years ago a publisher returned a manuscript informing me the use of the “n” word was unacceptable. But it’s use was a significant contribution to the authenticity of the story. In this particular case, if you are writing authentically as did Page, Clemens, or Steinbeck and are prevented from using the terminology of that era you are describing what you are left with is a kind of Stalinist or Hitlerian revisionist “history.”

Another time an editor took it upon himself to change my use of the word “Negro” to “Black.” I informed the editor the term Negro is correct especially when writing of the era described in my column, but the term black as generic of Negroes is incorrect. Not all Caucasians are white and not all Negroes are black; but the terms white and black are too often misused and derogatory while Caucasian and Negro remain legitimately correct terms. I reminded him of Thoreau’s comment about a marker in a graveyard calling attention to the person buried there “a man of color, as though he were discolored.” But while some racial terms are blatantly offensive, when it comes to matters of race it is almost impossible these days to know what will give offense. And living in an America where hyphenation, something Marilyn vos Savant thought the greatest of dangers threatening America, blurs the very term “American” hardly promotes Utopian pluralism, multiculturalism, or diversity.

Admittedly, it does take courage to speak the truth when there are so many enemies of the truth about. But I can’t help wondering how it has come to pass that no politician today dares tell us the truth about anything? And could it be the same thing that prevented good Germans from putting up those signs? And does this compare with a politically correct America where the truth must give way to half-truths at best? If so, God help us! Some politician is going to propose a law. Worse, some of these proposals will become laws legislating morality where all that is needed are more good examples and reminders.