Monument commemorating the Battle of Kings Mountain
There is a North Carolina warning sign for drivers approaching icy or treacherous roads. The sign consists of skid marks and the back of a car out of control. Thanks to our 74th Governor, Patrick McCrory, North Carolina is skidding backwards along treacherous roads into the Dark Ages. It will be a great backwards skid through the centuries.
You’ve heard of the Dark Ages when the black plague wiped out half of the world’s population, women and men were burned as witches in order for the greedy to steal their property. Thousands of libraries were burned to the ground. Rivers were polluted and everyone worked as soon as they could walk. Homeless families walked the land and lived in the streets begging.
However, the pious, and the royals thrived during the Dark Ages. There was no government assistance. The sick and dying were cared for by families or left on the streets to die. Cholera and diphtheria claimed victims each day of the week. Other than the burden of taxes, the only requirement of the peasant was absolute devotion to the Catholic Church.
If you ask history teachers they will say that the fall of Rome caused civilization to retreat into the Dark Ages. Rome fell because of social decline, runaway inflation, crime, and a discouraged middle class taxed into poverty trying to support the wealthy. But, I give credit for the Dark Ages to the Catholic Church, also. Instead, of leading civilization forward, the church embarked upon a total religious dictatorship.
Pope Gregory the Great declared that all secular education was folly and evil. The Pope went so far as to decree that laymen were not allowed to even read the Bible, unless a Bishop or Priest was present. The pious Catholic Church decided that knowledge was truly evil. Millions and millions of books were burned by priests and their rabid followers. Teachers, philosophers, and the pagan priestesses known as the Alma Maters were killed or escaped to the Arabian countries. Ignorance kept the people subjugated to the teachings of the church.*
Author Bertram Russell wrote that St. Jerome was more concerned with the preservation of virginity than victory over the Huns, Vandals and Goths. “Never once did St. Jerome turn his thoughts to any possible measure of practical statesmanship; never once does he point out the evils of the fiscal system or of an alliance on an army of barbarians. The same is true of Ambrose and Augustine, no wonder the empire fell into ruin.” *
The church crippled Europe by encouraging superstition, ignorance, and spoke only of the God’s wrath. The ignorant citizens believed that if you buried a crab; it would become a scorpion. Ducks had it pretty hard also…it was believed that if you buried a duck. It would become a nest of frogs.
Darkness descended across Europe. An esteemed 20th century scholar, Gilbert Murray, referred to the Dark Ages as a time caused by the “failure of nerves.”* An understatement, if I have ever heard one.
Which brings me back to the skid marks warning that our state is sliding on treacherous roads. As in the Dark Ages, the war on women continues in North Carolina and many other states battle to regulate women’s bodies and health rights. In committees of men, they dispense laws to force women to succumb to invasive, guilt riddled examinations and in the case of rape…it is always the female’s fault. Women are still considered basically evil…unless controlled.
Our tradition of public and higher education is being slaughtered. Our honored University system is being destroyed by limiting their budgets. Teacher’s pay has been reduced to the poverty level. Tea Bag Governor Pat McCrory has reduced teacher’s pay while lowering the standards for teacher certification. He says he is teaching us to support ourselves or…are they trying to subjugate us until we are illiterate and cannot spell our own name?
Governor Pat McCrory appears to not care whether his citizens have health insurance. Nor, does it seem that he would care if our children die from lack of health insurance or starve in our streets.
Thousands will be denied their right to vote in the next elections. We have allowed our rights to confiscated. The Republican wing of the Tea Bag party wants to return to a simpler time, the Dark Ages.
Will we allow our rights to be chopped away due to a “lack of nerves?” Our historic and heroic ancestors would not allow their lives to be governed by George III and pay taxes to his greedy list of royals who received the bounty of our taxes.
The Piedmont was known as the back-water country in the 1700s. The coastal society considered the German peasants and the Scots-Irish too crude, too dirty, too lazy and worthless to live among polite society. They sent our forefathers into the frontier to fight the Cherokee and tame the primal forests.
There are many families in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Lincolnton to the port of Wilmington blessed with the proud names of these rugged, independent ancestors. Our forefathers were uneducated peasants who could make a life from rock soup and slept in lean-to’s and log cabins. They not only survived, but turned the Revolutionary War in the favor of the Colonies by defeating Major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain.
I am not. I am not proposing revolution. I am proposing that in the spirit of our ancestors that we protest every day of the week. Laymen, elders, religious leaders, and our youth must stand together against the loss of our rights. Petitions, sit-ins, letters to the editor and moral Mondays are our weapons. Those who can still vote…must vote against Republican Tea Party domination. No effort to oppose the Governor and his legislature is too small. We must demand a fair and equal government. We must stand against those who hope to take America back to an earlier period when the old and the young worked twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week.
Republican Governor McCrory, in his nine months in office, has systematically taken away our rights and if we let him continue without a loud hue and cry…we will skid into darkness.
* Source: The Woman’s Encyclopedia by Barbara G. Walker, 1983
