Those who knew and loved him, as well as the music fans among us, must miss him dearly. To everyone, my deepest sympathies.

It has been fun

Thank you for the nice write up, Jill! It was great to meet you!

Great article John, Charby and John Hagen were a couple of inseparable pals that I met at Hamlin Hardware, John's store. I was with John when he was killed at BIR, and watched his boys when Charb told Gerry, who was not at the track, that he had died. Before Charb passed he said, now I'll get to see John.

Just the california tickets would have bought 1,133,333.33 programs for the children.

Phil,
You are free to use the below as a reference for further columns.
Pete pete.monica@yahoo.com

Christian Nationalism
vs
E. Pluribus Unum (Together We are One)

What Were the Thoughts of Our Founders?
by Peter Blomquist

The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason. Benjamin Franklin.

From the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute I noticed the list below which represents the beliefs of Christian Nationalists.
• The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
• U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
• If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
• Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
• God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

Below is a list of quotes about what the Founders of our wonderful country thought about Christian nationalism. The list is thought provoking, a good civics lesson, and paints a clear picture about the place for religion in a democratic republic.
• Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society. George Washington, general and commander of the Continental Army, and our first president.
• The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion. John Adams, our second president.
• Creeds have been the bane and ruin of the Christian church, its own fatal invention, which, through so many ages, made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and at this day divides it into castes of inextinguishable hatred to one another. Thomas Jefferson, our third president, the writer of the Declaration of Independence.
• What have been the fruits of Christianity? ...Superstition, bigotry, and persecution. James Madison, the chief writer of the Constitution, our fourth president, the author of the Declaration of Independence and one of three writers of the Federalist Papers.
• Science, the partisan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on a chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosophy of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science and asks not who sits beside him. Thomas Paine
• If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution. George Washington
• Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Thomas Jefferson
• Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Thomas Paine
• Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Thomas Paine
• Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects. James Madison
• I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Thomas Jefferson
• The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson
• History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil, as well as religious leaders, will always avail themselves for their own purposes. Thomas Jefferson
• Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind. John Adams
• I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. Benjamin Franklin
• When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. Benjamin Franklin
• The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church. James Madison
• The civil government … functions with complete success … by the total separation of the Church from the State. James Madison
• Because the Bill [to institute an assessment to fund teachers of Christianity] implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation. James Madison

It is clear the Founders strongly felt a democratic republic could not endure if religion did not respect the concept of E Pluribus Unum, together we are one. What we see now in the United States is religion putting God before country and will lead to theocratic authoritarianism which has a strong history of divisiveness and utter failure. Their way or the highway.
Please readers, know that we are on the precipice of the destruction of our wonderful democratic republic. America is whistling past the graveyard!

E. Pluribus Unum, Together We Are One

If The Almighty wanted women to be priests he most certainly would have made his mother one!

Christians believe people are made up of a physical body, a spirit, and a soul. The soul consists of one's mind, will, and emotions.

The spirit comes alive when we ask Christ to be our saviour. From then on, we obey Christ first instead of being led byour bodies and souls. Sorcery ties to hijack spiritual power and be in the driver's seat. It is always doomed to failure. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you." Matthew 6:33

This is really fabulous stuff, Phil. Great read. Thank you.

It is a good thing America is divided; it shows some people are thinking. "In God we trust, all others pay cash."

There is an old joke that runs, “Who discovered water?” “Well, nobody knows, but it probably wasn’t a fish.” The same idea is shared more succinctly by the great physicist Richard Feynman, who said “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

These are both ways of noting that those who are too close to an issue often fail to judge it rightly due to overcommitment, or unstated prejudices, among other factors. The Reader’s recent cover story on evaluation by “Scholars” ranking the best to worst US Presidents very much encapsulates this problem.

It is interesting to note that this piece is unsigned, which strongly suggests it was written by a committee. In most cases in my professional life, write-ups done by any group larger than three end up being a mishmash of watered-down & contradictory ideas. Having taught history professionally for over 3 decades at the High School level, both U.S & World History, my take is that over all this piece is sloppy and incorrect.

Let’s look at the biggest problem here, I won’t have space to cover smaller quibbles: Just why is Trump (who I do not respect & have never voted for) “the worst president EVER”, as your headline complains? Trump’s term was relatively inconsequential in terms of how the American people were affected. The economy was better than under the current president, inflation not nearly so high as now. Trump had a couple of very negative accomplishments, chiefly (with Democratic collusion to let someone as unqualified as Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court) the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as well as the usual (R.) giant tax cuts for the wealthy. On the plus side, Trump was the only President in this century not to start one or multiple new wars. Additionally, early on he killed the TPP Financial Treaty to abandon U.S. sovereignty over our economy by installing a corporate-financial oversight to void local laws for safe food, water, to support labor unions & worker rights, etc., a treaty generally described as “NAFTA on Steroids.” He handled the Covid-19 pandemic with the help of Democrats like Fauci by distributing vaccines despite some of his supporters’ craziness around the issue.

Now let’s compare Trump to the 2 presidents we’ve had in this century who are (not just in my view) among the very worst, Bush 2 & Biden. In 2006 Bush Jr. displaced the corrupt Richard Nixon near the bottom of the list according to your “experts” group (see Feb. 2007 “Esquire”) due to his multiple failed wars (chiefly Iraq & Afghanistan), torture & renditions, isolation from our “Allies”, an economic Crash that devastated ordinary Americans, etc. And now we have Biden who has 2 failed wars, chiefly Ukraine v. Russia but also is supporting with arms & logistics an open genocide by Israel against Palestinian civilians overwhelmingly. (40% of those being murdered are children, 30% women, etc.) Oh, but Israel also indiscriminately killed 3 Israeli hostages trying to surrender & escape in December, so brutal are their mass executions of “anything that moves” in Gaza. (Anything that moves was a US directive of who should be killed during the Vietnam war, or course.)
When Trump was President everyone warned (rightly in my view) that his Administration would isolate us from allies internationally as had occurred under Bush. (Just one example, the French refused to participate in the Iraq invasion based on the WMD Lies, & were taunted by Congress with “Freedom Fries.”) But the Biden Administrations blank check for genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem & the West Bank has caused many allies to step away from the US: not just South Africa which is pursuing a Genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice but also Ireland, Spain and many others. Brazil is heading the BRICS economic bloc forming to move away from US Dollar dominance, joining the Chinese, Russians, also our former very close ally the monarchial Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (and many more.) If Biden continues to support the genocide beyond the 4 months he’s already funded and supported it, there is no doubt most of these nations will step away from the US and it will become an international Pariah.

In closing, Trump is a bigoted, piggish & vulgar ignoramus (but we have had plenty of those as President; Harry Truman certainly, despite how highly the “experts” rank him.) But I think multiple failed wars and supporting genocide rank worse in the eyes of the world (& Biden’s economic flubs will result in Trump getting a 2nd term most likely.) Sadly, such failures evidently don’t matter in the eyes of insider “Experts”, though I think that once the US Empire has been destroyed by Bush’s over-commitment to setting fires in the Mideast & Biden’s Imperial overreach, they may come around to share my view.

Bernie is another phony jew . I am glad I am an good jew

Define your terms. Did he have a bar mitzvah, you mean?

Bernie is a mensch, and Biden is a mensch. Trump is a shlump.

If Spinoza didn't have faith in God, then how could he talk about faith? If he never experienced faith but was talking about it, he really would not know what he was talking about.

Wow! What a disgraceful column. It is hard to summon up words, the author's point of view is so degraded & hateful.
He calls himself a "liberal" and perhaps implies he is "progressive," then tells you that (in a "democracy") you MUST support a vicious racist like Biden who is funding & expediting a full-scale starvation & genocide of the Palestinian indigenous people in the West-created haven for Ashkenazi Jews (whose ancestors converted to Judaism in the middle ages, look up "Khazars" on Wikipedia) who for the most part never had ancestors in the Kingdom of Israel which existed for less than 2 centuries!! But hey, the US is doing what it does best, murdering non-white people (Vietnamese, Indonesians, Syrians, Libyans, Hondurans, Cubans, Chileans, etc. ad infinitum) & Mr. Anderson, a good "liberal" is clapping loudly from the Peanut Gallery!! Just sickening.

What's the difference between a Liberal and a Fascist? A Fascist is less hypocritical and will tell you plainly that they enjoy oppressing & murdering non-white & poor people (including poor whites.) A "liberal" like Mr. Anderson will support the exact same policies (I bet Mr. Anderson thinks Victoria Nuland is a great thinker) and pretend to lament the death of innocents with crocodile tears.

As my last name indicates, I am of partially Germanic stock & I hate and lament the crimes of my cousins there during the largest major genocide in the 20th century. Now we have a 2nd genocide occurring, 85% of the World knows it, Mr. Anderson even admits it is a genocide, & he tells me I must vote for Genocide Joe and enable it!! (NB-- I was born in South Dakota as my poor German ancestors were driven out of there by poverty in the late 19th century, as my poor Irish ancestors were driven out of Ireland by famine deliberately created by the English at the same time. So nobody closely related to me ran the crematorium ovens, as far as I know.)

No, Mr. Anderson, I won't support any NeoCons, Joe nor the rest!! I won't be complicit in genocide & if you had any humanity you wouldn't demand I do so. Yes, people in Wisconsin & nationwide "didn't like Hillary"!! She is equally racist & genocidal as Joe (Lock Up the Darkies) Biden, who wrote the "crime bill" creating criminal sentences for crack cocaine 100 times stronger than for good white Wall Street execs who like to snort an occasional line in their limos & never get arrested, resulting in decades long jail sentences for 1,000s of black, brown, & some poor white men & women over 2 generations, while people like his "wonderful" son Beau can film themselves smoking crack & broadcast it and get nothing worse than paid "therapy."

Hillary Rodham Clinton was a Goldwater Girl who opposed the Civil Rights movement, MLK & equal rights for black Americans in the 1960s & '70s. Her husband is (like Trump) a sexual predator & rapist & an associate of the pedophile Mossad agent Jeffrey Epstein, but hey, they mean well (?) She opposed gay marriage for decades. She never met a colonial US war she didn't love. She spit in the face of voters like me (I was forced out of the Dem party after 40 years support when they stole the nomination from Sanders a 2nd time in 2020, openly) for years, calling us stupid & weak. They never oppose the "bad" Republicans with the hate and virulence they do with the actual Left, they are all buddies. She pulled a coup in Honduras during the 2nd Obama admin that resulted in drug dealers running the country, & mass, organized rapes against Honduran women until finally those monsters were ousted. Oh, & in Libya, which had the highest standard of living for decades after Gaddafi came to power, she ran another coup that split the country into 3 weak ethno-states ruled by Stronmen. In one of those, there are Slave Markets for blacks from Sub-Saharan Africa being openly sold-- here "management" of foreign affairs must make you so proud, huh? Black chattel slavery in the 21st century (just like Joe pulled with the prison industry)-- how praiseworthy is that!!

Yes, Mr. Anderson, brandish your wonderful moral superiority over all of us who don't support "the donors" who run both the Good Cop Dem party & the Bad Cop R's and continue to shovel money uphill to the richest while slashing social services to the middle class & poor, betraying FDR's legacy, who do NOTHING to confront or stop Climate Change, who start endless wars (as you yourself admit) & profiteer personally thereby. But if you have any intellect left (I used to respect you uniquely among the D.R. staff, you at least had a sane view of the US-incited Ukraine (Nazis) v. Russia war which will soon result in corrupt, small & poor Ukraine becoming even more hellish & backward), if you have any integrity left, I'd ask you to acknowledge that once you support genocide (as you admit you do) you are unworthy to even be called a "Liberal." You are a Fascist & White Supremacist, based on the policies you support, just as much as both Biden & Trump are.

If the "Overton Window" in this country has moved so far right that the Left, or "liberals" actively scold and demand that we all must SUPPORT genocide & the starvation & murder of civilian populations of women & children, the USA is NOT morally superior to Hitler's Germany. It is equivalent.

But continue to Punch Left and hate those of us who won't support your beloved Uniparty. It pays the bills I'm sure. And you're not important enough to be listed in the history books as someone who acted as a cheerleader for ethnic cleansing, apartheid, & genocide as you do in this article.

The first letter to the editor I had published in the Reader denounced what I thought was your fellow columnist Drabnik's false claims that Liberals are the real Fascists. Regretfully you have proven him partially correct.

The rest of the world and history will dump the US Empire in the trash-can of history next to Nazi Germany, the North Koreans, the Burmese Junta, Pinochet's Chile, Pol Pot's regime, & settler-colonialist Israel. The US will be a Pariah State alongside the genocidal Israelis who we support while they slaughter the "human animals" Mr. Ben Gevir speaks of. The Military Industrial Complex owes you their thanks.

From me, you only get contempt & shame (if you are even capable of that?) I won't be reading you or the Reader in the future if this is the best that "Liberals" like you can do.

Mark Schneider,
Duluth MN

Oops!! I accidentally called Hunter Biden "Beau" & left a "g" out of Strongmen. Sorry, it's hard to edit such a long response online before hitting Add Comment. PS-- I'll be interested to see if this comment stays up, since I know good Liberals now support censorship just like their Rightist Pals do. You can't have people like Jewish Voices for Peace protesting Joe or Genocide. It upsets the Libs!!-- M.S.

Anyone who is not a billionaire or an outright militarist fascist voting for EITHER of the Duopoly Corporate Endless War parties "is like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving." Funny that Mr. Anderson only sees Evil on one side of the aisle when they are both right wing authoritarian parties funded by the Oligarchs and working only for the Oligarchs. Biden blocking affordable health care (saying he would veto it!) is okay-- why exactly? Yes, mostly the Dems are better on some social issues (LGBTQ+ rights) but they still fund endless wars & loot & spit on their supporters. (The GOP fears their base, the Dems hate their base has been axiomatic for decades.) Hey, Phil, why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye & pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" as a brown-skinned Palestinian once said. Keep supporting the Dems while they make sure your children & grandchildren die in poverty, perhaps of fentanyl ODs as America circles the drain!!

See one across the Des Moines River in Windom, Minnesota 56101 today April 1. 2024. Seen it the last few days. Very wooded and safe.