Category: Americana

Men Of Peace #1 Donald Trump

President Donald Trump is a man of peace.

Like his Republican predecessors Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush 1 and Reagan, he can be tough when needed but prioritises peace when others seek war.

Last week, on March 17, he clearly stated that we need to be “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s vision. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat.

But the greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves ……..”

This is greatness. This is leadership. This is a peace maker.

Lincoln saved the American Union in The Civil War and freed slaves.

Teddy Roosevelt talked of the need in foreign policy to “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Eisenhower warned America of the dangers the Military-Industrial Complex could bring.

Nixon’s détente softened The Cold War.

Reagan’s  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty gave America a better, safer relationship with Gorbachev’s Russia.

Bush 1 showed necessary toughness in liberating Kuwait but left it at that when others pushed for a much bigger war.

In 2023, war with Russia over Ukraine is not the business of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Ukraine is not in the North Atlantic.

Donald Trump is unequivocally and courageously standing up against both the war-mongering of neocons in his own party and the currently even more dangerous war-mongering which seems unopposed in the Biden administration.

This is President Trump working for peace.

This is greatness.

This is leadership.

God Bless Donald Trump for standing up for peace.

Geoff Fox, 22nd March, 2023, Down Under

We Shall Return – Thank You General MacArthur

As my life is trashed by police state crap in Melbourne, Australia, I look to certain people to seek a recovery.

The innate systemic goodness of most human beings can defeat the evil which sometimes corrupts this world.

But it takes work.

Together, we shall return.

I revere the leadership towards such ends of General Douglas MacArthur in World War Two.

He took the essential human yearnings for discipline and peace and channeled them for victories from this date in 1942 (when he was recorded making his iconic “I shall return.” promise in outback Terowie) till Japanese imperialism was decisively destroyed.

He had to get past lazy stupidities like the Brisbane Line to achieve his success.

He once said, “There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.”

God Bless Good Clean Thought.

God Bless Freedom.

Geoff Fox, 20th March, 2023

Men for Freedom #1 Charlton Heston as Marc Antony

Today is the Ides Of March, the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated 2,267 years ago. Initially the Roman people supported the assassins. In William Shakespeare’s version of the story, the immortal Friends Romans, Countrymen speech by Marc Antony turned public opinion against the plotters.

If the Brutus of that speech was an honourable man, then so is Joe Biden in his ice cream dreams.

The following is a slightly poeticised version of some libertarian thoughts of actor Charlton Heston, who played Marc Antony in the 1950 film, Julius Caesar:

“The pulsing lifeblood / of liberty’s inside us: / our cultures sacred birthright:

to think and say out loud / what is in our hearts.”

God Bless Freedom

Geoff Fox, 15th March, 2023

(The above piece of Word Art is a “Photo by Chalmers Butterfield” with words added by Geoff Fox and is published under A Creative Commons  Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.)

IMOTA # 7 William Shatner

William Shatner is pictured above with Jeanne Cooper in The Intruder, a 1962 movie which was perhaps ahead of its time in its handling of racism and integration.

His wonderful both spiritual and physical capacity with the English language, first as Captain Kirk and later on, makes it easy for me to call William Shatner an Indigenous Man Of The Anglosphere (IMOTA).

Captain Kirk asked, “What is a man but that lofty spirit, that sense of enterprise, that devotion for something that cannot be sensed, cannot be realised, but only dreamed, the highest reality?”

And Kirk said, “Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.”

Later on Shatner said, “Being an icon is overrated, remember an icon can be removed by a mouse.”

Shatner also said, “I always use a stunt double. Except in love scenes. I insist on doing them myself.”

We don’t need Scotty now as much as we used to, but William Shatner still lights us up.

Geoff Fox, 12th March, 2023, Down Under

William Shatner with Julie Newmar: a strong man’s hand on a beautiful woman. The way God meant things to be.

International Women’s Day – Mothers Are Beautiful

I can think of no better way to celebrate International Women’s Day, the 8th of March, than in focusing on God’s genius in creating men and women and sex in God’s image – creative, beautiful and with the power to build communion through life.

That is what normal family life starts with – it brings men and women together and, in healthy societies, that leads to families, which are the building blocks for human success.

Some feminist people see what women and men should do differently, with more of a focus on their lives as single people, but I was a Registered Midwife for a quarter of a century and the inanities of most third wave feminists are not going to convince me that women are victims who cannot ever look after themselves.

Claire Trevor, 3 husbands, 1 child, 1 Oscar (from 3 nominations), 1 Emmy, d.o.b. 8th March, 1910

Women as mothers are usually glorious, captivating, loving and good.

Actress Karen Morley. She was Poppy in the original Scarface in 1932. Deceased 8th March, 2003.

What women do in life and love is various and that manifestation of E Pluribus Unum strengthens us all.

Cyd Charisse, d.o.b. 8th March, 1922 In comparing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, she said “….. it’s like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both delicious.”

Cyd received a National Medal of Arts from George W Bush in 2006.

God Bless All Women But Especially The Mums.

Geoff Fox, 8th March, 2023, Down Under

Theology For Freedom #1 Thomas Aquinas

St Thomas Aquinas died on this date in 1274, 749 years ago.

The ideas of Aquinas on Natural Law are echoed in the assertion in the American Declaration Of Independence: ““We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ……. “

In his letter from the Birmingham City Jail in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr also referred to Aquinas: “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” 

Towards the end of his life, Thomas Aquinas pointed at his own books and said that his writing “appears to be as so much straw”. This rejection of bookishness by one of the great book writers in human history reminds me of the insightful rearticulation by my new friend Father Michael Bowie of the essence of his own Christian faith: “God is a person not a book.” I have made my own adaptation of these words to suit the emptier spaces of part o the Guercino portrait of Aquinas distracted from his writing seen above and below.

As I see it, the eternal law of God, which Jesus said he came not “to destroy, but to fulfil“, can also be fulfilled in all of us at our best.

Our best is when we speak our minds in ways that help us hear.

I would like to call that theofreedom.

Aquinas.

Thomas Jefferson.

Martin Luthor King (Jr)

And, hopefully, that God-based freedom still lives in us, here and now.

Sincerely, Geoff Fox, 7th March, 2023, Down Under

Great Americans #1 Georgia Totto O’Keeffe

Painter Georgia O’Keeffe died on this date in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1986.

To my eyes, she was a good looking woman (see picture above) and was so good artistically at looking at the world and then using her American freedom to create something new, that she became known as The Mother Of American Modernism.

She described her emotional life in these terms: “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do.”

A Georgia O’Keeffe artwork with words added by me.

God Bless Freedom and Honest Aat.

Geoff Fox, 6th March, 2023, Down Under

Women For Freedom #22 Dinah Shore

Dinah Shore was born 107 years ago today, on the 29th of February, 1916.

She evoked the excitement of nights spent doing new things till dawn.

But her career sat way outside the modern era of graphic pornography available to anyone of any age who lives in a free country and knows how to use an online device.

Honest, restrained adult sexuality was very much a part of her work as proved by lyrics like:

“I could have danced all night/and still have begged for more.

I could have spread my wings/And done a thousand things/I’d never done before.”

God Bless Freedom

Geoff Fox, 1st March, 2023, Down Under

Women For Freedom #21 Ruby Keeler

In the movie “Dames”, Ruby Keeler’s character Barbara Hemingway said, “I’m free, white, and 21. I love to dance AND I’m going to dance.”

Those were different times.

Ruby died 30 years ago today in California aged 83.

“Al Jolson was my first husband.” she once said, “He always used to boast that he was spoiling me for any man who might come after him. I think Al sensed that it wasn’t easy for me being married to an American institution… Was he right about spoiling me? I’m sorry. I couldn’t possibly say. I couldn’t be that indiscreet.”

Those were the days.

Geoff Fox