For some reason, there are times when memories from 5o years ago or more will come rushing back as unsummoned.

Today I found myself remembering Mom’s leather strap she would use to whip our backsides when we were out of line. The black strap was about 4 feet long and had little holes punched in one end. I suppose the holes were to enhance the stinging effect when the strap found its target.

Mom had, what turned out to eventually be, the unfortunate habit (for her) of keeping that belt in the different handy “go-to” place. Whenever one saw Mom head for one of those belt hideaway spots, one knew one was in trouble.

I have no complaints about the belt being overused. I’m sure whenever Mom drew it out, I deserved every lick I received. However, that is all in hindsight. Eventually, at a very tender age, I realized that the mere existence of that leather strap was my sworn enemy. And of course, enemies are made to be eliminated and so I determined to eliminate that blackstrap enemy.

So, at an age most tender, I went on a seek and destroy mission. I had no way to literally destroy the leather strap so I did the next best thing. I hid the damn thing in a place only God could find. Being satisfied with my work I returned to my cavalier boyish life.

You know where this story is heading, don’t you? I mean, it is not like I suddenly became an angel that did not need the instrument of learning applied to the seat of application. Yep… sure enough, the day soon came when I did that mischievous something that warranted the leather whip. However, I must admit that a certain relaxing strain descended upon me when I realized my mother had gone on the hunt for the belt. I knew the matriarch would not find what she was searching for and that my hindquarters were in no threat.

There I was, knowing that I was worthy of a whipping while also knowing that my poor mother was soon to realize that she was in a pickle. I watched her go throughout the house looking at the old haunts where she would typically hide the belt. As she headed in each new direction I knew that the end of her furious search would end in futility.

Pretty soon, she was worn out, and then it dawned on her as she glanced at me … I had a hand in the Sherlockian case of the missing black leather strap. It was like watching a light bulb literally going off over her head.

The poor woman was betwixt and beside herself. She was caught in a flurry of emotions ranging from anger at my hiding her dreaded weapon to laughter that I would think of doing such a thing at my tender age. She didn’t know whether to laugh in good humor at my resourcefulness or to go all nuclear for my boyish insolence.

Of course, she demanded to know where I hid the belt. And, of course, I insisted that I had no idea what she was talking about. Hey … in for a penny in for a pound right?

I honestly don’t remember how that encounter ended. I do remember that Mom bought many more belts over the years and that I, in turn, hid many more belts over the years. I am quite confident though, at the end of my childhood years, I didn’t miss out on any of the whippings that my Mother believed I deserved.

I would recommend this discussion by Jon Harris on Christian Nationalism. Because Harris is in transition and so is moving on this issue I don’t agree with everything he has to say but I think it is a serious attempt to discuss what has become one of the most hot-topic buttons out there.

https://podcastaddict.com/episode/132255196?fbclid=IwAR2FGV3joyGu8YaZFGTbqSBxSWUXvcasVylx06G-lpffrxfx8ldG1oI3FEA

Just a few random observations;

1.) Harris indicates that it is his conviction that it is a common faith that is the glue that holds a people together. He notes that shared ethnicity cannot be the prime glue that holds people together, observing that even though people like Sunnis and Shia can have the same ethnicity, their lack of a common faith puts them at one another’s throats.

However, we could just as easily make this observation about religion. In Acts 6 we have people who have a shared faith but who are in friction it can be argued because they don’t have a shared ethnicity. It is interesting that in Acts 6 the way this friction is resolved is by appointing deacons who share the same Greek ethnicity as the widows that are the occasion for the problem.

The idea that the glue that is required to hold a social-order together is both a common religion as well as a common genetic inheritance is seen in pre-enlightenment Christendom. This was a time when the major countries of Europe were all Roman Catholic, yet the dominant ethnic lines of England, France, Germany, Italy, etc., developed very different cultures. This is because, I would contend, because both a common faith in a shared religion combined with a common genetic inheritance is the glue that hold cultures together. The idea that culture equals faith plus ethnicity is easy to demonstrate. Another way of saying this is that culture is faith poured over ethnicity. A nation is a shared core religion poured over a core ethnicity. Both must be present. If both are not present chaos is the result.

“On the morning of December 4, the Navy radio receiving station at
Cheltenham, Maryland, intercepted a Japanese overseas news broadcast from Station JAP in Tokyo, in which there was inserted a false weather report, “east wind rain.” On November 19 the Japanese Government had instructed its ambassador in Washington that such a weather forecast would indicate imminence of war with the United States.146

After intercepting this Japanese instruction the radio receiving stations of the American armed forces were on the alert for the “east wind rain” message. As soon as it was translated, Lieutenant Commander Kramer handed it to Commander Safford with the exclamation: “This is it.” Safford got in touch immediately with Rear Admiral Noyes who telephoned the substance of the intercepted message “to the naval aide to the President.”147

According to the testimony of Captain Safford [in 1941 a Commander], the
“winds” message and the change of the [Japanese] naval operations code
came in the middle of the week: two days to Saturday and three days to
Sunday. It was unthinkable that the Japanese would surrender their hopes of surprise by delaying until the weekend of December 13—14. This was not crystal-gazing or “intuition”—it was just the plain, common-sense acceptance of a self-evident proposition. Col. Sadtler saw it, and so did Capt. Joseph R. Redman, U.S.N., according to Col. Sadtler’s testimony in 1944. … The Japanese were going to start the war on Saturday, December 6, 1941, or Sunday, December 7, 1941. 148 

For the next three days Commander Safford and Lieutenant Commander Kramer tried in vain to get some action out of their superior officers with regard to the implications of the “east wind rain” message. When they induced Captain McCollum to exert some pressure upon Admiral Stark he was given a sharp rebuke which so infuriated him that he later poured the whole story into the receptive ears of Admiral Kimmel. This disclosure led Kimmel to press for the Pearl Harbor investigations.

The unaccountable failure of high naval officers to convey a warning to Honolulu about the imminence of war was given additional highlights on the evening of December 6 when the Japanese reply to the American note of November 26 was sent secretly to Ambassador Nomura. It was intercepted by Navy receiving stations and decoded. When the President read this message to Nomura he at once exclaimed: “This means war!” He tried to get in touch with Admiral Stark but was informed that the chief of naval operations was at the National Theatre enjoying the delightful strains of The Student Prince.1

** The next day the Admiral’s ears would be assailed by the crashing echoes of the attack upon Pearl Harbor. It would ordinarily be assumed that the President, after reading this intercepted Japanese message, would hurriedly call a conference of the more important Army and Navy officers to concert plans to meet the anticipated attack. The testimony of General Marshall and Admiral Stark would indicate that the Chief Executive took the ominous news so calmly that he made no effort to consult with them.150

Did he deliberately seek the Pearl Harbor attack in order to get America into
the war? What is the real answer to this riddle of Presidential composure in the face of a threatened attack upon some American outpost in the faraway Pacific? This problem grows more complicated as we watch the approach of zero hour. At 9:00 A.M. on December 7, Lieutenant Commander Kramer delivered to Admiral Stark the final installment of the Japanese instruction to Nomura. Its meaning was now so obvious that Stark cried out in great alarm: “My God! This means war. I must get word to Kimmel at once.”151 But he made no effort to contact Honolulu. Instead, he tried to get in touch with General Marshall, who, for some strange reason, suddenly decided to go on a long horseback ride. It was a history-making ride. In the early hours of the American Revolution, Paul Revere went on a famous ride to warn his countrymen of the enemy’s approach and thus save American lives. In the early hours of World II, General Marshall took a ride that helped prevent an alert from reaching Pearl Harbor in time to save an American fleet from serious disaster and an American garrison from a bombing that cost more than two thousand lives. Was there an important purpose behind this ride? This question looms constantly larger as we look further into the Pearl Harbor hearings.

When Colonel Bratton, on the morning of December 7, saw the last part of the Japanese instruction to Nomura he realized at once that “Japan planned to attack the United States at some point at or near 1 o’clock that day.”152 To Lieutenant Commander Kramer the message meant “a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor today.”153 This information was in the hands of Secretary Knox by 10:00 A.M., and he must have passed it on to the President immediately.

It was 11125 A.M. when General Marshall returned to his office. If he carefully read the reports on the threatened Japanese attack (on Pearl Harbor) he still had plenty of time to contact Honolulu by means of the scrambler telephone on his desk, or by the Navy radio or the FBI radio. For some reason best known to himself, he chose to send the alert to Honolulu by RCA and did not even take the precaution to have it stamped, “priority.” As the Army Pearl Harbor Board significantly remarked: “We find no justification for a failure to send this message by multiple secret means either through the Navy radio or the FBI radio or the scrambler telephone or all three.”154 Was the General under Presidential orders to break military regulations with regard to the transmission of important military information? Did he think that the President’s political objectives outweighed considerations of national safety? Was the preservation of the British Empire worth the blood, sweat, and tears not only of the men who would die in the agony of Pearl Harbor but also of the long roll of heroes who perished in the epic encounters in the Pacific, in the Mediterranean area, and in the famous offensive that rolled at high tide across the war-torn fields of France? New cemeteries all over the world would confirm to stricken American parents the melancholy fact that the paths of military glory lead but to the grave.

But the President and Harry Hopkins viewed these dread contingencies with amazing equanimity. In the quiet atmosphere of the oval study in the White House, with all incoming telephone calls shut off, the Chief Executive calmly studied his well-filled stamp albums while Hopkins fondled Fala, the White House Scottie. At one o’clock, Death stood in the doorway. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. America had suddenly been thrust into a war she is still fighting.”

Charles Callan Tansill 
Back Door to War; Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941 — pg. 650-652