Independence Day—July 2nd or July 4th?

John Trumbull. 1818. “Declaration of Independence.” U.S. Capitol. Washington, D.C.

From the end of the French and Indian War until 1770, the conflict between Great Britain and the American Colonies had intensified into full-blown violence, culminating with the Boston Massacre in March 1770. For the next five years, small skirmishes took place throughout the Colonies. Then, in April of 1775, British troops were ordered to confiscate weapons from town arsenals and other military equipment caches, and to arrest leaders of organizations who were calling for rebellion against Great Britain. On April 19th, 1775, in the Battle of Lexington and Concord the Colonial militia drove the British military back to Boston.

The Colonies were not fully ready or willing to go to war against what was at the time the most powerful military in the world. On July 5th, 1775, the Second Continental Congress drafted the Olive Branch Petition in hopes that the conflict could be put to an end. Many members of Congress were upset that any attempt to appease Great Britain was being made, but Congress realized that the Olive Branch Petition could fail and on July 6th drafted the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. The next month, Great Britain issued the Proclamation of Rebellion after King George III learned about the Battle of Bunker Hill which took place on June 17th, 1775.

In spite of that, the Colonies were still willing to negotiate peace and continued to make attempts until the summer of 1776. In June, "the Committee of Five" was selected to draft a declaration. The committee consisted of John Adams (Mass.), Benjamin Franklin (Penn.), Thomas Jefferson (Virg.), Robert R. Livingston (N. Yk.), and Roger Sherman (Conn.).

On July 2nd, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced the following resolution to the Second Continental Congress: "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." Thus, July 2nd, 1776 is the date that the Second Continental Congress declared American independence from Great Britain.

John Adams, who had been frustrated with attempts at peace negotiations over the previous year was elated and wrote to his wife on July 3rd, 1776, telling her, "The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

If America officially declared independence from Great Britain on July 2nd, why do we celebrate on July 4th?

After the measure was passed, a committee was formed to create a document that would explain the resolution and its reasoning to the general public. The committee of five, already at work on the declaration went back to work in earnest and by July 4th, they had all the elements they believed would be required. Thomas Jefferson was recognized as the most eloquent writer and was assigned with the final draft which was then taken to a printer that day. Thus, the header of the Declaration of Independence reads, "In Congress, July 4, 1776"

200 broadsides were printed and sent out throughout the colonies. 26 of those still exist. The original handwritten version wasn't signed until August 2nd, 1776. Since members of Congress were pretty tied up with the war, they didn't think about the Declaration again until July 3rd, 1777 and July 4th seemed to make sense as the day to celebrate independence. John Adams and many of the Federalists still believed that July 2nd should be the date, but Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans believed it should be July 4th and the argument continued until 1812 when the Federalists faded away as a party. After that, July 4th was cemented as Independence Day.

On July 2nd, 1826, Thomas Jefferson wrote his final letter and commended future generations to remember and celebrate Independence Day, not just as a day to remember America's independence, but as the day that the first world government recognized all human rights. He wrote, "For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died two days later on July 4th, 1826.

History is revised all the time and that's okay

The term "historical revisionism" is too often misused. Revising history is why historians exist. When most people talk about "historical revisionism" what they really mean is denialism, negationism, or distortion. Denialism and negationism are essentially the same things. Denialists say historical facts did not actually happen. For instance, there is a growing number of people who adhere to the negationist belief that the Holocaust did not take place.

Often kissing cousins to denialism/negationism is historical distortionism. Distortionists take well-known events, people, and places and change them and their history to fit a philosophical agenda. A mild example of this, using the Holocaust as an example once again, would be those who say, "Well, yeah, the Nazis did kill six million Jews, but they killed a lot of other people too," in an attempt to minimize the effect the Holocaust had on Jews as a people.

A more common type of distortionism happens when advocates of a specific philosophical agenda pick and choose which facts to believe, teach, or emphasize when teaching history. In history and especially Latin American history, we refer to this as either the White Legend or the Black Legend.

The White Legend is a version of history that focuses on a specific group of people as heroes of history. They were all great, they were all godly, they were all brilliant, and their lives should be emulated. In the study of Western Civilization, that would be like focusing on the fact that Greeks developed democracy while ignoring the fact that most of the population of Greece were slaves and were completely disfranchised. Scholarly adherents of the White Legend might concede the existence of slavery while qualifying that concession with "yeah but."

The Black Legend, on the other hand, vilifies the heroes of the White Legend and even when talking about their achievements, they do it in a way that shines the brightest lights on their flaws and misdeeds. The Black Legend also will focus on oppressed peoples as the heroes of the story, often ignoring the flaws of the oppressed that they criticized in the oppressors. An example would be the growing narrative of the colonization of the New World as the worst thing to ever happen in the history of mankind and the Old World, especially Europe should be apologizing for ever setting foot in the New World. Black Legend historians also frequently commit the historian's fallacy, that is they judge the past and the people of the past by today's standards, rather than judging them based on the standards of the past and recognizing that those people were products of their environment and upbringing in that society and culture of the past.

The reality, where good history is involved, lies between the two. We can look at the achievements of people of the past and say, "Wow! That's really something." We can also look at their flaws and the things that we would consider evil in our time and say, "Wow. That's really bad." The trick is to be both unbiased and nuanced. Something that is woefully missing from the public narrative and the teaching of history in too many schools. Frankly, I think I was lucky in college to have a majority of professors who at least attempted to remain unbiased and present a nuanced version of history. That said, one of my favorite professors was openly biased about some things in history. He and I disagreed on how Thomas Jefferson should be approached on day one of the first class I had with him. I took that professor twice and loved his class both times and even got As without sacrificing my approach to history.

The worst kind of distortionism, albeit also the rarest, is when "historians" just make up history.

A few years ago, Virginia came out with a new history textbook for elementary school. In the 4th grade text in the section on the Civil War, there was a claim that free blacks in the South and slaves actually served as soldiers in the Confederacy. No such thing happened. When the author, Joy Masoff was asked why she included the section, she said she wanted to "add a little something extra."

A few months ago, I read an article on the website, We Are the Mighty, titled, “5 cringeworthy military slang terms (that we should actually retire),” that suggested the term "in country" was a shortened form of “Indian Country,” and was used in the military to mean enemy territory. Having been in the military, the only use of the term "in country" I have ever heard referred to actually being in a country while deployed. The author of the article, Blake Stilwell was suggesting that the term, “in country” no longer be used because of its racist heritage. The author of the article provided a link to order Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States where the article's author found the claim. I had never heard this claim before, so first, I searched to see if this claim had been made by anyone else. It had not. Second, I looked up the etymology of the phrase "in country" to see its history. The phrase "in country," according to the Oxford English Dictionary was first used in 1560 in England and was actually the shortening of the phrase "interior country" meaning the interior regions of any country. The phrase’s first use in the 20^th century was in 1953, in a book of poetry by Dylan Thomas called, A Prospect of the Sea and meant being in a specific country. So, then, I got a hold of Dunbar-Ortiz's book and looked up the sections where she refers to "in country." One section claims that the phrase “in country” was a shortening of the phrase "Indian Country" and originated in the Vietnam War, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary is incorrect. So, I then looked up her sources in the footnotes and bibliography. She had one footnote for both times she made her claim, but that footnote just describes what qualifies as “Indian Country” according to political scientist Sharon O’Brien in her 1993 book, American Indian Tribal Governments. The term “in country” does not appear anywhere in O’Brien’s work either. Without a source to back up her claim and with scholarly sources that actually counter Dunbar-Ortiz’s claim, one can only assume that she made it up.

Often, fabrications, like Masoff’s claim about black Confederate soldiers, are easy to spot and debunk. Fabrications like Dunbar-Ortiz’s claim are more insidious because she has a Ph.D. in History from a respected university and most people will simply take her claim at face value and then repeat it, even in academic settings. I took a humanities course in college and the professor with a Ph.D. repeated the “rule of thumb” urban legend as fact. This particular urban legend states that English Common Law stipulated that a man could beat his wife as long as the rod he used was no wider than the width of his thumb. This urban legend is easily disprovable, but because it is often repeated as factual in feminist academic circles, it continues to be treated as fact in many places in the rest of academia.

Teaching history is difficult enough as it is because there is a lot of it. History teachers and curriculum developers have to balance teaching good history along with trying to determine the most important topics to cover in the time allotted. On top of that, there are political forces at work, pulling from all directions that demand their important topics are covered as well. When the curriculum is finalized and shows up in school districts, teachers have to figure out how to teach the curriculum in a way that also meets the demands placed on them by standardized testing objectives created at the state and federal levels.

Primary school teachers are rarely history majors and get an awful lot wrong. I first learned about Christopher Columbus in second grade and was taught that Columbus set out on his 1492 voyage to prove that the world is round when most of the people of his day still believed that the world was flat. Neither of those claims is true. Most people in 15^th century Europe believed the world was spherical and had for centuries. Aristotle is often credited with being the first to claim the earth was a sphere, but people for centuries before Aristotle—Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Mesopotamians, and Phoenicians—had an understanding of a spherical earth, especially mariners. I was also taught that Columbus discovered America, but the fact that there were humans in the Americas for thousands of years makes that claim clearly incorrect. Even the claim that he was the first European to set foot in the New World is wrong because the Vikings accomplished that hundreds of years before Columbus.

In secondary schools (middle schools and high schools) history teachers are just as often history majors as they majors of other social sciences. A teacher I had the opportunity to observe who teaches history was a political science major and has a J.D. She told me that she knew a lot about history and the facts behind most of the laws she teaches in her government classes, but she was at a loss on how to teach straight history. She still sends me notes from time-to-time for advice on certain subjects.

The point I am trying to make is that teachers in public schools, regardless of what their biases may be—and yes they have biases and yes they sneak them into their curriculum—have an incredibly demanding job just trying to meet the standards. People often tell me, “So much has been erased from history books.” I have to respond, “False.” The information is still there, but there is not enough time to teach everything that everyone wants to teach. In Western Civilization, when teaching about the development of democracy in Greece, I really wish more time was spent on Cleisthenes, the man who essentially invented democracy, how he came up with the idea, why he came up with the idea, and a little more of his background to really give a context for his invention of democracy. Yet, I never heard of Cleisthenes before I graduated from high school. In my Western Civilization course in college, Cleisthenes was mentioned one time in one sentence in the one chapter on Greece that covered Greece’s pre-history through Hellenistic Greece. My professor, who spent three lectures on Greece never mentioned Cleisthenes one time. I watched a documentary on Ancient Greece last week, a documentary I thought was fabulous by the way, yet Cleisthenes was only mentioned in passing at the end of the second episode. I think Cleisthenes is the biggest hero of Greece’s Golden Age, but to most historians, he’s a footnote.

Some people cry, “I can’t stand the way history has been changed.” History is going to change. It has to. I mean, if we have all the documentation on a person, place, or event, history may not change much, if at all. However, because of human nature, historical evidence gets lost, destroyed, misplaced, or hidden and it takes years, sometimes, for that evidence to come to light. Sometimes, when that evidence comes to light, it completely changes the way historians understand and interpret history and history has to change. I’m writing this essay because of the way so many people recently have been making this very complaint.

Just the other day, I saw a meme on Facebook that claimed that the Pyramids of Giza were built by slaves. I made a simple response challenging that idea since archaeologists and historians no longer believe this. Between finding no slave burials at or near the site, the care in which the people who worked on the pyramids were treated when they died, the records the workers left behind, and numerous other archaeological findings, it became clear to archaeologists, historians, and Egyptologists that slaves were not involved. My response was intended as a light-hearted comment that I hoped would direct people to look up the information. I even included a line in my response that the pyramids were also not built by aliens or with spaceships and ended it with a “winking” emoji. My claim was met with abuse. I’m not easily offended, but I figured the replies I had received were just based on ignorance, so I responded by posting an article by Zahi Hawass, who is the world’s leading Egyptologist. It was not a scholarly peer-reviewed work, but I made the mistake of believing that Hawass was well-enough known to be respected. I was wrong. Hawass was accused by one commenter of being a racist elitist and that the article I posted was merely his opinion. I gave up, because willful ignorance is hard to overcome. Many people came to my defense and Hawass’ article replying with comments about archaeological findings and mentioning articles and books to read, but at some point, you’re just feeding trolls. It’s best to just let them starve.

“They’re not teaching history the way I was taught history.” The way history is taught is going to change over time. It has to. Too many people contributed to history that have been left out of the story. American history, for instance, is usually taught as a line of progress, led by white men. Yes, white men enslaved Africans, but who freed the slaves? Abraham Lincoln who was white. Women fought for the right to vote, but who gave them the right to vote? The mostly white, male Congress when they passed the 19^th amendment. African-Americans fought for their very Civil Rights, but who gave it to them? The white President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

I must concede that my statement in the above paragraph was slightly hyperbolic. Obviously, there are some non-white, non-male people who have been included in the teaching of history, but has history really been all that inclusive? Let me use the Revolutionary era and the Revolutionary War as one example. Most Americans are familiar with the Boston Massacre which took place on March 5, 1770. Many Americans might even be familiar with the fact that the first man to die in the event was Crispus Attucks. However, most people don’t know that he was black, and fewer still know that he also was part Native American. How about the famous Midnight Ride of Paul Revere? Most people don’t know that there was another midnight rider that night. While Revere rode west, another man, Wentworth Cheswell rode north to warn other communities. Wentworth Cheswell’s mother was white. His father was black. There were other midnight riders as well, one of them was a woman, Sybil Ludington who made her midnight ride April 26^th, 1777. She rode 40 miles (twice the distance of Paul Revere) to warn militiamen in Putnam County, New York that the British were going to attack a Continental Army supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut. Deborah Sampson was a woman who dressed up like a man to fight in the Revolutionary War and received a pension after the war, even after her secret was discovered and in spite of her having broken the law concerning women in military service.

There are even more stories of brave men and women of all ethnicities who fought and died for what would become the United States of America. We can’t tell all their stories in a single curriculum, but we can tell more than we have, which is why history isn’t taught the way I was taught or you were taught, nor should it be. When we do bump up the untold stories up the list of priority, someone who previously had their story told gets bumped off the curriculum. Their stories still exist, but people who are generally interested and concerned about history will have to do some extra reading.

While most historians attempt to remain unbiased, history is still a subject of some interpretation. I don’t mean that historians interpret something to have happened or not, because the evidence provides us with the answers to the questions of who, what, and where. Historians often have to answer the questions of why and how and it is absolutely impossible to prevent any biases from slipping in. Even so, historians can still come to a consensus about some interpretations simply because the subjects of history often leave the answers to all the questions.

History is going to change and that’s okay. It changes every day. As long as people exist in places and do things, more and more will be added to history, which makes it change. History also changes as new evidence is discovered, which also happens every day. Those discoveries affect not only our knowledge of history but our interpretations as well. Attitudes, ideas, and cultures change, and as long as they continue to change, interpretations of history, where there is room for interpretation, will change along with them. If history doesn’t change, there is no purpose for historians. It’s also important for non-historians to know history, though, because as George Santayana is often quoted as correctly observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If remembering the past were not important, then that would be the final nail in the coffin for historians. Knowing history also means knowing that change happens not only in history but how history is done. That's what revision is and that's why revision is actually a good thing.

Azulão

Composer: Jayme Ovalle (1894-1955)
Lyrics: Manuel Bandeira (1886-1968)

In early March, cellist Yo-Yo Ma encouraged musicians around the world to create music during the COVID-19 global pandemic and attach the hashtag #SongsOfComfort. I first fell in love with this song in 1990 and it has always brought me comfort. So, using my very limited recording capabilities, I recorded this song in my home on March 19. While I uploaded the video on Facebook and Instagram, I completely forgot to upload it here. I hope people will enjoy and take comfort during their time at home.

#SongsOfComfort #StayHome #WithMe #QuarantineAndChill #FlattenTheCurve

The Coronavirus, Giving Feet to Your Prayers, and Not Foolishly Tempting God

“Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)

There is an old saying: “Put feet to your faith,” or alternatively, “Put feet to your prayers.” In other words, prayer is necessary and important. As Hank Hanegraff has famously said, “Prayer is firing the winning shot before the battle ever takes place.” However, it’s also important to understand that God usually uses people—His people—to accomplish His purposes. In the verse quoted above, Christ tells his disciples that laborers are needed to accomplish God’s purposes. Then, in the very next chapter, Christ sends his disciples to accomplish His purposes (Matthew 10:5). Christ, in those passages, sets the example that we need to pray and then we need to go do something, when we are able, to accomplish what we are praying for.

There was a man who lived alone in an area prone to flooding. One year, a storm came through that threatened to breach dikes and the potential for flooding was extremely high. Officials warned people living in the area where the man lived that the whole area could be submerged and ordered an evacuation. The man laughed at the television broadcast and said, “The Lord will provide.”

As the storm began to roll in, local government officials began going door-to-door to warn people to evacuate. A police officer in a truck came to the man’s house, knocked on the door, and warned him that the river levels were rising, could breach the dikes any minute, and told him he needed to evacuate. The officer even offered to assist the gentleman in gathering any necessities. The man simply waved the officer away saying, “The Lord will provide.”

As predicted, the river breached the dikes and soon the whole area was flooded. At first, the man simply went up to the second floor of his house. A man in a boat drove by and noticed the man in his home. The boatman told the man to get in the boat and the man waved him away with cries of, “The Lord will provide.”

Hours later, the man was forced to the roof of his home as the river waters overwhelmed his second floor. A helicopter from the Coast Guard flew over and noticed the man. They lowered a ladder and told him to climb in, but the man waved them away with the same cries of, “The Lord will provide.”

Finally, the water overwhelmed the house, the man was swept away and drowned. As he stood before God, he said, “I thought you would provide.” In response, God said, “I provided a news report, a truck, a boat, and a helicopter.”

When God told Moses that He would deliver Israel, He also told Moses that he would be the instrument of delivery. James tells us to be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1:22). James also shows us what that means:

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:15-17).

A person can’t depend on faith that food and clothing will just magically appear. Something needs to be an instrument of provision. Usually, the instrument of provision is a job, but when people fall on hard times, they turn to charity and God’s people should then become that instrument of provision.

We may pray for the poor, but we also need to provide for the poor. We may pray for change in the world, but perhaps we should take note of Mahatma Gandhi’s advice to “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Often, when tragedy strikes, you will often hear Christians say they are sending their thoughts and prayers. They are then immediately ridiculed by unbelievers who say, “You can pray all day long, but what good will it do? Maybe you should go and do something!” Good point and James makes this very same point:

“Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” (James 2:18-20)

This is the same conversation—an unbeliever is ridiculing a believer who sits around and does nothing while the unbelievers are out working and making changes in the world. James says, faith is not enough. Even worse, faith without works is dead. You can believe all the right things and even be sure of your own salvation, but what good does that do if you keep it to yourself? The word “dead” is correctly translated, but it is used here as a euphemism for being worthless, good for nothing.

As the song, This little light of mine says: 

Hide it under a bushel?

No!

It’s not enough to say, “I have faith.” It’s not enough to say, “I’m thinking of you and praying for you.” One must show their faith through action. As James wrote, “I will show thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

Now, if a family’s house burns down, you may not be able to provide a new house or the long-term housing for a displaced family by yourself, but that’s where the community of faith comes in. The whole church can come together and help those in need. The church I go to has a winter clothing drive in the fall and provides clothing to those in need throughout the year. The church also has a food pantry to help people in need of food. My church is not unique in these ministries. When people are in need, the church can provide all kinds of help to its members and I can speak from personal experience because I have been both the recipient and benefactor of charity through my local church.

To those who mock believers for sending thoughts and prayers, keep in mind that when tragedy strike, it is usually believers as part of the community of faith who are the first on the scene providing aid, comfort, and helping in whatever way they can. When hurricanes hit, churches are usually already assisting in the recovery before FEMA and other government agencies can even get mobilized.

Along with the strange idea that God will magically provide through prayer, as if God has a Star Trek transporter in heaven that He uses to beam down our needs, is the idea that we can put ourselves in unnecessary danger and if we pray to God, He will deliver us from all harm. Granted, if it’s God’s will, He can do some amazing things and even deliver us from all harm, but that doesn’t mean we should tempt God—that is we should not put Him to the test.

In the early 16^th century, the plague hit Saxony (part of modern-day Germany). Wittenberg, the home of one of the most famous men in Church history, Martin Luther was especially hard hit. COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is unlikely to affect humanity on the same scale like the plague, but Martin Luther’s response seems both relevant to the discussion of putting our feet to our prayers and not foolishly tempting God by putting ourselves in unnecessary risk. One pastor, Dr. John Hess wrote to Luther asking for advice on how to deal with the plague. Martin Luther wrote this in response:

“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.”

Christ told his followers the pray with the faith that they would receive what they prayed for. “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). However, James also tells us that people often do not have their prayers answered in the way they expect because they were praying selfishly. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3).

Praying selfishly is just another way of putting God to the test. Praying something like, “God. I’ll believe you exist if you give me a million dollars,” or “God, if you make my debt go away, I’ll become a missionary” are hypothetical examples of how people tempt God—put God to the test—through prayer.

There are four lessons to take away from all this:

1. Pray selflessly. It’s okay to ask for your needs and your health, but try to remember that it’s not just about you.

2. Pray with faith that you will receive what you ask for. Don’t just go through the motions of prayer thinking it’s meaningless. Prayer has power. But…

3. Pray with action. God usually uses people to achieve His purposes.

4. Do not pray in a way that puts God to the test. Don’t foolishly put yourself in harm thinking that God is going to protect you every time, and don’t pray selfishly, especially when you know you’re asking for something that God does not want you to have.

Think about it.

How Did Christians Decide Christmas Was On December 25th?

The Nativity by He Qi

A 12th century biblical scholar named Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote a bible commentary dated to 1171 A.D., a copy of which was discovered in the 19th century. In a note written in the margin of the copy that was found is the claim that Christmas was moved from January 6th to December 25th to coincide with the Roman pagan holiday Sol Invictus. From this, Christian critics, legalist Christian sects, and Christian cults condemned the celebration of Christmas as being of pagan origin. While the Bible makes no mention of the date when Christ was born, there is quite a bit of evidence that He was not born in December, namely that the Bible states that there were Shepherds keeping their flocks in the fields at night, which is not something they would have done in the winter. There are other ways to estimate the time of Christ’s birth, but suffice it to say, He was not born in December. Does that mean that Christmas is a celebration of pagan origin?

20th century scholarship, much of it still unknown outside of work by historians and scholars of ancient texts, has actually refuted this idea by looking at the Christian practices and writing of the time the supposed borrowing took place. When Aurelian proclaimed Sol Invictus to be an official cult of the Roman Empire on December 25th, 274 A.D. and thus making that day the feast day of Sol Invictus, most Christians were not celebrating the birth of Christ. There was some interest in determining the date of His birth, with Clement of Egypt writing in 200 A.D., recording some of the proposed dates as March 21st, April 15th, 20th, or 21st, or May 20th. At any rate, one of the reasons why Christians were persecuted from the foundation of the religion until the tolerance of Constantine in 312 A.D. was that they did everything they could to remain wholly separate and distinct from non-Christians. They would not have adopted a holiday from pagans at all from 274 to 312, as well as for many years after.

It was not until the late 6th century that Pope Gregory suggested “Christianizing” pagan celebrations in hopes of getting pagans to adopt Christianity. This also explains why many modern Christmas decorations like the Christmas tree, Yule log, wreath and lights all have pagan origins. No Christian writer prior to Gregory even suggested such a thing. On the contrary, their works suggested the exact opposite, encouraging pagans to throw off all semblance of paganism. Augustine in the third century, wrote a book titled Confessions in which he describes his conversion to Christianity and his separation from paganism and in addition to defending Christianity against pagan scholars, he lifts up his mother as an example by telling how she would stop any activity when she found it had the slightest similarity to pagan celebrations. Since Augustine was the model theologian for the early church and many theologians of his time and for centuries after tried to be like him, it should come as no surprise that there is no encouragement from any writer until Pope Gregory to adopt Christian celebrations and paganize them.

The problem is that Christmas appears as a Christian celebration long before the time of Pope Gregory. Pope Julius I proclaimed December 25th to be the official date to celebrate Christ’s birth in 350 A.D. The first official celebration of Christmas in the Roman Empire was on December 25th, 336 A.D. There is even a record that shows that Christians in Antioch (present day Turkey) celebrated Christmas on December 25th in about 150 A.D. The earliest record of the term “Sol Invictus” is from 158 A.D.

If Jesus was not born in December and Christians did not take the date from pagans, where did the date of December 25th come from? Early Christians may have determined the date by determining Christ’s death. In about 200 A.D., Tertullian of Carthage said that Jesus died on March 25th. A rabbinical tradition that important events repeat on the same date caused Tertullian and other North African Christians to believe that the annunciation—Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would conceive of the Holy Spirit—happened on March 25th as well. Augustine was familiar with the March 25th date and reported it in a sermon he preached.

“For he is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”

In other words, if Jesus was conceived on March 25th, a belief held by Christians for at least 74 years before Aurelian’s proclamation of Sol Invictus, then simply adding nine months gives a date of December 25th according to the same tradition. The evidence is quite clear that Christians were using this date for 124 years prior to Aurelian’s proclamation and even several years before a belief in Sol Invictus even began.

No matter how this issue is approached, the birth of Christ was believed by Christians to have been on December 25th long before the proclamation of Sol Invictus

John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons

Sunday night I had some free time for once and I decided to watch John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons. This is now showing on Netflix and is a filmed version of his one-man Broadway show. Leguizamo attempts to tell the history of Latin America in the form of a narrative about helping his son work on a middle school project.

The show is based on some true events. When Leguizamo's son, Lucas was in middle school, he was bullied by white kids at his school and called names like "beaner." When Leguizamo informed the faculty and the offending students were punished, the bullying was intensified. Lucas became ashamed of his heritage and his father set out to find some kind of Latin American history his son could be proud of. The show is the product of his research.

I'm glad that he took the time to do some research, but as with any actor's attempt to "teach" history, the result is promblematic. Leguizamo's source material includes Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States," which Stanford historian and education expert, Sam Wineburg describes as a far left "crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions." Leguizamo's interpretation of Latin American history echoes the leftist crusade, is reductionist and reiterates leftist canards, one of the worst of which is that Europeans deliberately and systematically wiped out 95% of the indigenous population.

It is 100% true that the European treatment of indigenous Americans was criminal, and they made a solid go at killing off the population, but even liberal estimates put their achievement at a 15% reduction. The other 80% of the population was wiped out by disease. Leguizamo points this out, but his claim is that the Europeans figured out that European diseases were killing the indigenous people and all they had to do was wait around for indigenous people to get sick and then they could go in and waste the indigenous people. In order for Leguizamo's claim to be true, Europeans would have had to have a late 19th century understanding of bacteriology and epidemiology. Unfortunately for the people of the Americas, the European age of exploration began in the late 15th century. Vaccinology wasn't even invented until the late 18th century and even then, it wasn't well understood. The fact is, even if some "hey dude," peace-loving, hippies came to the New World from Europe, the native population of the Americas would still have been decimated by disease.

That's not genocide, because it's not deliberate, that's just plain bad luck.

At least with Zinn's book, Leguizamo was referencing respected, albeit problematic book. What I found surprising were the number of urban legends and meme claims being reiterated as fact by Leguizamo. For instance, he claims that the founding fathers plagiarized the US Constitution, copying it from the Iroquois Constitution. First of all, he doesn't even get the urban legend right. The urban legend is that the American Articles of Confederation were plagiarized from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace. Second, both of these documents are freely available from a variety of reputable sources. Conduct a simple internet search and you can find the full text of the Great Law of Peace, the American Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution. Read them, compare them, and contrast them. They are very different. Furthermore, the founding fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who Leguizamo specifically names had a great deal of respect for Native Americans. While they may have drawn some inspiration from Native Americans (I have no documentation for that), most of the founding documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution were based on the writings of European Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and Charles Montesquieu.

I was also disappointed by how often Leguizamo took the low road of comedy. He often criticizes Donald Trump in his show and I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that he often stereotypically caricatures women, disabled people, people of different races, religions (including Judaism and Islam) and homosexuals. This bothers me on several levels. Donald Trump has been rightly criticized for doing the same thing. Conservative comedians would get raked over the coals for doing a show with content of this nature.

Don't get me wrong, Leguizamo gets a lot correct and if nothing else he addresses serious issues in the American approach to writing history text books. I was surprised he didn't address the Mexican-American studies program in Tucson that was banned by the school board for being un-American based on nothing more than hearsay. I was also surprised that in his search for Latin American heroes for his son, his first major figure was a European born Spaniard, General Bernardo de Gálvez . In his quest for Latin American heroes, he barely gave a footnote Venezuelan born Simón Bolívar , who is often referred to as the George Washington of South America. The Mexican Cry of Dolores lists six heroes of the Mexican Revolutionary era: Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Morelos, Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano Matamoros. He could have told his son about José de San Martín who brought independence to Argentina.

There is one last area where I feel John Leguizamo got something wrong. He claims that Latin American history has been systematically cut out of American history curriculum. I disagree, because in order for Latin American history to have been "cut out," it has to have been part of the history curriculum to begin with and it has not been, which, to me, is even more egregious than the history having been cut out.

Latin American history is usually limited to conflict arising from the secession of Texas from Mexico and the resulting Texas Revolution and then the Mexican-American War.

Usually, the only person who gets main billing for the Texas Revolution is Sam Houston and of course the heroes of the Alamo like William Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett. What about Juana Navarro Alsbury, a Tejana who attempted to negotiate surrender for the Alamo defenders? I don't remember being taught about the Mexican-American War other than it happened and resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican Cession. I don't remember reading about the Radical Whigs and Mexican Oligarchs working together to unify Mexico and the United States into one country, but being rebuffed by racist Americans in the Democrat party, including President James K. Polk and conservative Whigs who were worried that America was already too big and should not expand. I don't remember hearing that General Zachary Taylor was sent to occupy a disputed strip of land and began sending out patrols to taunt the Mexicans into a fight. When the Mexicans did attack a patrol which was on what the Mexicans perceived to be their territory, Polk claimed it was an act of war and used it as an excuse to force the Mexicans to sell the Mexican Cession for chump change.

I'm not suggesting that we give land back to Mexico. What I am saying is that Latin Americans of all national origins have contributed to the formation of this country, probably more so than any other minority group. I’m also suggesting that, while I believe that America is a great country, the teaching of its history should show everything, the good and the bad--warts, bruises, and all.

I do hope that people watch John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons with the understanding that it is primarily entertainment, problematic history with an agenda second, and with that understanding, I hope people will read and research and find out for themselves how their own ancestors contributed to the development and history of this country. As a historian and an aspiring educator, I hope that future curriculum will worry less about putting America in a consistently positive light and just teach history instead. I think America is great. I think America was built on positive ideals. However, America has not always lived up to those ideals and we have some skeletons in our closet. It might change the shade of light that history curriculum shines on America from rosy to stark, but how can future generations learn from the mistakes of the past if they don't know what the mistakes were?

If you’re looking for a good history of Latin America with no agenda, The Penguin History of Latin America by Edwin Williamson is probably the best there is. The Two-Volume A History of Latin America by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes is also good and has the benefit of some great illustrations. Another great book that deals with a lot of border issues during the time just before and just after the Mexican Cession is Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History by Karl Jacoby. I can’t recommend that book highly enough. I’m kind of obsessed with it.

Leguizamo did recommend two books that are worth reading. One is Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. This is a great book that discusses why societies collapse and though it was written 21 years ago, it’s still relevant today. Jared Diamond also has a Ted Talk called “Why do Societies Collapse?” That condenses the findings of the book if you don’t want to read the whole book. Leguizamo also recommended 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Mann is a science journalist and this book consolidates the growing body of work by archaeologists, historians, ecologists, geographers, and anthropologists regarding Native American history.

Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh, the Seriousness of Accusations, and the Presumption of Innocence

I should probably be using my down time at work to be working on homework right now, but I am just too angry and I have to get this off my chest.

A few minutes before I began writing this, I was on patrol at a local college where I work part time as a security officer. I passed by some faculty offices and outside one of the offices, on a bulletin board was a piece of paper with the words “WE BELIEVE WOMEN” printed on it. That was the final straw for me.

Over the past few weeks, I have watched this country degenerate into the worst political state imaginable. It’s not just Republicans and it’s not just Democrats. It’s both and their followers who blindly line up behind their “leaders” lockstep like lemmings and they have all gone over the edge together.

Since I used to be a Republican several decades ago and I still typically vote Republican, I’m going to start with Republicans and people on the right. But don’t worry Democrats and people on the left, I have plenty of juice for you and I am going to give it away for free tonight.

Over the past few weeks from Republicans, Republican voters, so-called conservatives, and way too many Libertarians, I have seen some of the vilest, hateful, ignorant, sexist, and misogynist comments I have ever seen spewed forth from the fingertips and out of the mouths of you people in the name of “questioning the accuser.” It hasn’t been just men either. Even worse, many of them should freaking know better!

“Do all women wait 40 years to report a rape, or is it just Democrats?”

I saw that question in meme form posted on a woman’s Facebook page. But don’t worry guys. A lot of you posted this nonsense too. It’s shameful and it’s ignorant. Here’s a better question: How many women who are victims of sexual violence never report the crime to police? And the answer is about 70%. That’s right, about 7 out of every 10 women who are raped or otherwise sexually assaulted will never tell authorities and their attackers will likely never face justice. EVER! The only reason why we have statistics on this is because women do tell people—friends, family, therapists, clergy, and other people they trust. The reality is, though, that many women may not tell anybody and take the information to the grave with them, so the real number could be higher. Much higher.

I will throw another statistic out there for you women who may be thinking about climbing on your high horse. Men are also victims of sex crimes and while the numbers of men who are sexually assaulted are lower, the number of men who report sex crimes to authorities is only about 10%.

Why would a woman not tell the police they have been sexually victimized? The answer to that is for women have already been victimized, the process of bringing their accuser to justice forces them to be revictimized. They have to go to a doctor who is going to swab every inch of her body for evidence. After a sexual assault, most victims don’t want to be touched at all. They want to shower, close and lock their doors, pull their drapes, and cry themselves to sleep. Then of course, there are the lawyers who are going to question their reputation, their actions, how they dressed. Yes, it is the job of defense lawyers to try and place the blame on the victim if there is solid evidence that the accused did sexually assault the accuser. Then, of course, there is the shame that comes with having been violated that way: What will friends and family think, and if this becomes a big enough deal, what will the public think? Do you want to have your name and reputation dragged through the mud? I don’t think so. Anyone who comes forward, even in a clear cut case is very courageous. This is why we take accusations of rape or sexual assault seriously. Notice that taking an accusation seriously is not, nor should it be synonymous with belief, or disbelief for that matter. But I’ll get back to that in a bit.

“If Christine Blasey Ford was so afraid of flying, why did she fly to Hawaii, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean?” and similar idiotic questions.

The questions about her travel habits may be a clever tactic to convince the weak-minded that there is a problem with her story, but in reality, there are many people who are afraid of flying who do so because it is the only way to quickly get somewhere where they need or want to be. Sean Bean of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones fame doesn’t like flying, but do you think he took a boat to New Zealand to film Lord of the Rings? Nope. He flew. During one filming sequence, the crew needed to take a helicopter to get on set. During the first trip, some of the cast played a prank on Sean Bean and got the pilot to do some “fancy flying” and it scared Sean Bean. So, for the rest of the filming on that set, he got to the site early, got into full Boromir costume, took a ski lift part of the way up the mountain, and then hiked the final few miles. The whole trip took him two hours each direction every day. And yes, he did it multiple days.

Could it be that Ford wanted to avoid unnecessary travel?

I know lots of people who are afraid of flying. I am not one of them, but I have a family member who is afraid of flying. She has flown all over the world with a white-knuckled death grip on the armrests the whole way. But still she flies and I believe she has gotten better about her fear of flying, but I haven’t asked her about it lately. The point is that people who are afraid of flying will avoid flying unless they have to or the rewards for flying outweigh the drawbacks. For Ford to testify in the Senate hearings, she could take a week-long trip by car or a three day trip by train or bus, which would be extremely inconvenient, or she could suffer through the shorter albeit more stressful inconvenience of flying in one day. She’s an educated woman and I believe she made the educated choice. Facing your fears to do what you love or feel is important is pretty brave.

Brett Kavanaugh has many great character witnesses that say he’s a great guy.

So what? Ted Bundy was liked by everyone who knew him. Jeffry Dahmer was described as a thoughtful, active citizen. Phillip Markoff was an honors student. Robert Lee Yates was an active member of his church. They were also all notorious serial killers. If enough evidence comes out to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kavanaugh did sexually assault Ford, none of his character witnesses will amount to a hill of beans, to coin the Humphrey Bogart line.

Okay Christine Blasey Ford supporters. I have finished flame spraying Kavanaugh supporters, let me aim my frustration at y’all for a while.

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

Need I say more? How about this?

“The burden of proof rests with the prosecution until it shifts to the defense.”

These are foundational beliefs in the American justice system and yet with just an accusation, the anti-Trump crowd has actually decided that a person accused of a crime should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Regarding Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, former Vice President Joe Biden recently said, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.” It is almost as if Joe Biden is saying that if there is more publicity involved, the accusation should be taken more seriously. Really?

Here's another one for you:

“Equality before the law.”

I believe that what Joe Biden is saying has some truth to it. A person who has been sexually assaulted by someone prominent who is also willing to come forward is very courageous, but there could be other reasons why a person would make a false accusation against a person of prominence, but I’ll get to that. The fact is that a person is not more believable because they are accusing a person in prominence any more than a person in prominence is more likely to be a criminal. Sure, power corrupts, but that does not mean that we do away with the foundations of our whole legal system. If you think the prison population is a problem now, just go ahead and do away with equality before the law and innocent until proven guilty. A whole world of accusations will explode and so will the prison population.

But I digress.

“We believe women.”

That’s what got me here in the first place. Why are women more believable than men? Why is Christine Blasey Ford more believable than Brett Kavanaugh? But “we believe women.” Fine.

A young man who was a senior in high school, a talented football player, had committed to attend USC, and received a scholarship to attend. His star was on the rise. Then, a female classmate of his accused him of rape. He confessed to the rape in order to receive a plea deal and spent more than five years in prison. He lost his scholarship, while many of his high school friends went on to play professional football. The woman also received a $1.5 million settlement from the high school since the alleged attack occurred on the campus. Of course, a few years later she was found to have lied about the whole thing. Her family had to give back the money plus some, but the man, Brian Banks lost 10 years of his life, what likely would have been a promising, multi-million dollar football career, and who knows what other experiences were stolen from him because “we believe women."

In 2006, Crystal Gail Mangum accused three members of the Duke University Lacrosse team of rape. Women are to be believed right? Well, the case went to court and it was discovered that she had falsely accused the men of rape. That didn’t prevent the men’s lives from being thrown into chaos, having their educations interrupted for months, the mental strain, suspensions, distrust from friends, etc.

In 1987, Mike Pitassi a high school band teacher in Tuscon, Arizona was accused of sexually molesting two girls in the band. Women should be believed, right? Well, it turns out that they were going to receive a bad grade in band and wanted to get it changed. Either Pitassi would change the grade or they would go to authorities and he would be arrested and they would get their grade changed that way. It didn’t work out for them. Of course, it didn’t work out well for Mike Pitassi either. He resigned his position and I have no idea what happened to him. Sure, he was exonerated, but it hurt his career at the very least.

I have personally been the subject of false accusations at the hands of women for simply doing my job. They were believed. I was never accused of sexual assault, but I have still had accusations made against me. I was once accused of sexually harassing a woman. She accused me because I was her supervisor, and I caught her trying to get out of work and put her back to work. Fortunately, there were witnesses, both male and female, who came to my defense in the investigation, but it was a stressful time.

My story and the stories I listed above are not exceptional. They occur all too frequently because we have lived in a world for a few decades now where women are more often believed over men. Why? It’s low hanging fruit. It’s easy to pick and easy to eat. It doesn’t take much intellectual work, but questioning and investigating takes work. That work is made all the more difficult when the events being investigated are 40 years old. It's not just lacking in intellectualism, it is anti-intellectual.

The fact of the matter is that as much as politics plays a role in this issue because a Supreme Court nomination is at stake, this is not a political matter. It is a legal one. Because this is a legal matter, until Ford has a case that she can take to a court of law and try Bret Kavanaugh, Christine Ford’s accusation is just that and nothing more. It is a political maneuver by a woman who has been and still is an outspoken anti-Trump protester. Whether she’s making it up or it actually happened is a matter for a court of law to decide, not the general public, politicians or the media.

Why would anyone put themselves through this kind of a stressful situation where they’re receiving death threats and having to be victimized through the media again?

There are at least four possibilities.

The first I have already discussed. She is making a political maneuver to prevent a conservative judge from getting on the Supreme Court. The circus involved, even if he is eventually found innocent may be enough to get him to pull his name from consideration and let another nominee have his name put forward. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, someone might even be offering her some kind of monetary reward for doing this.

The second is attention. She may be looking for her fifteen minutes of fame. Sure, she’s a published Ph.D., but that’s not famous. She’s a household name now, though. Democrats and leftists, politicians and celebrities, and just every day people have rushed to her defense by the millions. She’s been automatically believed. For every negative e-mail or letter, or death threat she has received, there have been equal amounts, if not more support lavished upon her. A person who craves attention doesn't care if it's positive or negative. Sure, positive is preferred, but everything is good.

The third is a case of mistaken identity. I want you to think back to your time in high school, especially if you went to high school decades ago. Did you go to any parties? I did. Did you meet people from other schools? I did. Members of the opposite sex? Yep. Lots. What were their names? Uh oh. I went to a ton of parties. I met people from different high schools. There were a lot of people whose names I knew at the time because I swam with them for USAA, SAA, or AP&R for years. I also knew people from different high schools because we lived in the same neighborhood or went to the same schools at other times. I can only remember a few of their names now and only two of the females from other high schools. I remember them because I attended junior high school with them. Of the boys’ names from other high schools that I remember from high school parties, there is only one I remember because we swam on the same AP&R team and later the same USAA team. Other than the people with whom I am friends on Facebook, I couldn’t tell you what any of the rest of those people looked like today.

The point I am making is that it might be easy to remember a face, but it can be difficult to remember the name of a person you don’t see on a regular basis. If you throw in alcohol, drugs, or just plain being tired from being up late, you might forget a face, too. Add 20 years to that memory and you see a person who looks familiar, you check the name, and yep they’re from your town, yep, the name rings a bell, that must be the person! Of course, that person now looks like the older version of  another person who victimized you, or your mind is connecting that person to the memory of your victimization, and yes, that happens. In fact, it has been shown that people can be wrong about very simple and seemingly obvious details just moments after a crime has been committed. Adrenaline, fear, and other stressors can cloud details even further. Time does not help you gain clarity.

Then, of course, there is a fourth option: She remembers the whole thing vividly, Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and he and Bill Cosby should be sharing a cell together. If enough evidence is found to take him to court (no such thing has happened yet), then go to court. What if he’s already been confirmed? The Constitution has the “good behavior” clause and if he is found guilty, he would be removed from the court and jailed.

The veracity of Ford’s claims, or the guilt or innocence of Brett Kavanaugh is not for me to decide, or you, or the media, or politicians, or anyone else for that matter. It is up to a court of law.

Does that mean I disbelieve Ford’s claims and believe Kavanaugh’s claims? No. I take all claims of all crimes very seriously but taking a claim seriously does not mean I believe it or disbelieve it. It means that I believe that the claims should be looked into by law enforcement and if evidence is found to indicate there is a case against Kavanaugh, he should be taken to trial with an unbiased (good luck with that!) jury of his peers and the judicial system should handle the case.

I will not pass judgment on either Ford or Kavanaugh because I was not at the party where the sexual assault occurred. Neither were any of the people who are likely reading this, so for those who are passing judgment on one or the other, I am passing judgment on you: You're being stupid!

I will finish by asking a couple of questions to those who have pushed through their anger to read this far:

Ford supporters: Why are you supporting her? Is it because you believe all women without evidence or is it because you hate President Donald Trump so much that you will grab on to anything to hamper his administration and block his agenda?

Personally, I can’t stand Trump. I did not vote for him in 2016 and I have no plans to vote for him in 2020 either. I will even be honest and say I am not particularly fond of Brett Kavanaugh either. Sure, I love his libertarian and pro-constitution stances on the 2^nd amendment and government regulation. However, he has very problematic views concerning presidential impeachment. He supported government metadata collection in violation of the 4^th amendment, and there are other 4^th amendment opinions he holds that I take issue with. If I had a vote, I would not vote for him. However, does that mean I am willing to call him a sex predator because someone claims he did something almost 40 years ago? Nope.

Kavanaugh supporters: Why are you more willing to support him? Is it because you think that Ford’s accusations lack merit or are at least suspicious, is it because you love Trump so much that you are willing to overlook any possibility of malfeasance on the part of his nominees, or is it because you hate Democrats or anyone who opposes Trump so much that you automatically assume anything they say is a lie?

I am also not fond of most Democrats. However, I am not willing to just dismiss out of hand an accusation of sexual assault simply because of the timing or because it is made by a Democrat, nor am I willing to simply dismiss a claim because it was made 40 years after the fact since most sexual assaults are never reported.

Because of most of the arguments I have seen on the internet and in the media, I do not think either side is thinking about this from a non-partisan and logical perspective. Mostly, it’s just hate, vitriol, politics, and worse, feelings.

In other words, you’re both wrong and I'm not sorry if I hurt your feelings.