DINNING WITH US SENATOR WILLIAM LANGER

DINNING OUT WITH US SENATOR WILLIAM LANGER FROM NORTH DAKOTA
I was about eight years old when my parents went on a winter vacation. We stopped in Springfield Illinois and visited the tomb of Lincoln. After that we stayed at the home of Jack Murphy in Washington DC. Mrs. Murphy was a relative of my half brother Clayton Hanson. Mr. Murphy gave us a tour of Washington and he told us we could visit the Senate and see the senators debate. My father Bob Hanson went to the office of Senator Langer to see if we could get tickets. We were seated in the outer of office of the Langer’s office with the secretaries. Langer heard us talking and he came out and invited the Hanson family in to visit. I remember my father telling Langer who was a Republican that he voted for him. My father told him he was life long Democrat. We got the tickets and went to the senate debate on a law on margarine. Langer gave a speech on margarine. After that, he invited us to dine with him in the Senate dining room. He got us the table that Lincoln dinned at and I sat in Lincoln’s chair.

Why do I tell this story that took place around 1950? Do you think you could drop in to visit your Senator and get an invite to dine with him at his expense? You would have an army of lobbyists with bundles of hundred dollar bills in front of you inviting him to dine on the most expensive foods in the world.
I know that Langer was for the people and not the rich. When he was the governor of North Dakota he declared a moratorium on the foreclosing of farmers mortgages during the Great Depression. The bankers hated him.
Was there a shortage of lobbyists in 1950? Perhaps Langer wouldn’t dine with them and rather hear from the common people.

Planetary Order Of Oppressed People

Economic Bill of Right by FDR
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from 11 January 1944 message to Congress on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
source: The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Samuel Rosenman, ed.), Vol XIII (NY: Harper, 1950), 40-42

Encouragement to Post

Planetary Order Of Oppressed People

Planetary Order Of Oppressed People


John 8:32
32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (NIV)

Secrets hold you in oppression. The US government in the executive branch has become a stone wall designed to hold out the oppressed and enrich and further the occult.
Occult means
1 : not revealed : SECRET
2 : not easily apprehended or understood : ABSTRUSE, MYSTERIOUS
3 : hidden from view : CONCEALED
4 : of or relating to the occult
Our President has learned his lessons well about the occult at Yale in the Scull and Bones Club. He knows how to keep his followers in lock and step and even lick his cowboy boots.

His power comes from instilling fear. The only thing to fear is fear itself. The real truth is being covered up. Can congress penetrate the walls of the White House and bring out the truth or has congress become so weak that it is just a rubber stamp or will it become a shining light of hope.

Bonhoeffer put it:

If we want to understand God’s goodness in God’s gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us....

I was thinking of Bonhoeffer when I listened to the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday … and to the Democratic response that followed … and my feeling was that Bonhoeffer would have been disappointed – more likely appalled – by both. Disappointed, too, by any number of minor speeches over recent days from candidates and office holders who are laying out their agendas for the nation and for our state. There might have been, to be honest, any number of reasons for the disappointment, but the one that struck me most was the fact that in all of those speeches, in all that rhetoric, with all of those chances for true leadership, no one made it their business to overtly, passionately, and primarily champion the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the forgotten. There were fine and stirring messages for the middle class and – from some quarters at least – some promising words for the wealthy – and perhaps the implicit though questionable suggestion that what is good for the well-to-do will be good for all – but no one – no one in my hearing at least, Republican, Democrat, Independent – was saying: "Here is my first priority. Here is the great test of our nation’s character. We are going to marshall the ingenuity, the generosity, the sense of justice, and the will of the American people to end poverty in the next ten years, to ensure that no one goes to sleep hungry, or without decent housing, or without adequate health care. The fact that we tried this before and fell short does not reduce by one whit the importance of the goal but only gives us new information on which to build. Therefore, we will sacrifice, we will be disciplined, we will innovate, and we will overcome partisanship in this great endeavor. And, at the same time, in concert with other nations in the world, we will adopt similar goals for the entire globe. We will not be deterred. For our security, for our children’s sake, for the cause of justice, there is no higher calling. We dare not fail. We will succeed."

There’s a simple reason, of course, why that speech rarely, if ever, gets given. It’s because poor people don’t swing elections. David Brooks, in a recent editorial in the New York Times, suggesting that liberals sometimes inflate the numbers of those in need, proudly stated that "only 19 percent of males and 27 percent of females are poor or working poor" in this country today. Only? Only?? Only one quarter of our brothers and sisters, struggling with basic needs? It is a sad day when tragedy masquerades as success, and the people applaud.

Who, then, will be the voice for that one quarter of our population who daily live with stresses that might break many of us in this room if we had to deal with them? If we cannot expect politicians to do it, and if we acknowledge that the poor themselves vote less and are less organized than most groups, then who? The truth is that Christians – poor and wealthy Christians together, acting both individually and through their churches – can do this, and many are doing it. And here is a good surprise. Advocacy for the poor may be emerging as the common ground that evangelicals and liberals have been seeking in recent years. We may not agree on the virgin birth or the atonement, but we can agree that hungry children are an assault on the dignity of God. We may clash over ecclesiastical polity or other social issues, but we can come together around policies that provide decent shelter for every person. In fact, bringing their usual fervor to everything they do, some evangelicals are outdoing traditional liberal Christians in seeking economic justice. And some are paying a price for their stands. Ask Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, a Republican and conservative Christian, who, out of his Christian faith, came to the conclusion that his state needed a new, fairer, tax policy and then took a drubbing on the issue, especially from his own political base. When it comes to government policies that perpetually benefit the rich and burden the poor – and we seem awash in these recently – Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands as a loving but challenging witness against us if we remain silent.

We will never know how history might have been different had the churches of Germany, and not just a few individual Christians, stood together and denounced the evils of National Socialism in the early 1930’s. We will never know. But it is the evils of economic injustice that are before us now. If the church has no charter to add its voice to the voice of the poor, what charter can it claim? What meaning can our faith have, if it does not speak to the condition of Lazarus, who languishes just outside our door? But we do have a charter … and our faith does have meaning. In scripture and in tradition, in the history of this congregation and in our own hearts, our calling is clear. The ear of God is tuned to our response; the heart of God aches for our answer.

Amen.

From a

A sermon preached at
Plymouth Congregational Church
Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis

February 5, 2006

the Rev. James Gertmenian

How to end oppression.

How can you do your part in ending your oppression and those around you.