Guest post => Ludell H. Johnson=> The Abbeville Blog => In Search of the Real Abe Lincoln or Destroying the Myth: Lincoln, As Seen Through the Lens of Adventist Theology

This past Memorial Day weekend, we visited a church that we'd visited before, but had since moved into what is now it's "permanent location."  As we went there, the first Hymn we sang was the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  I'd read this article before and found that I could not sing all of the verses.  

I've thought about this article long and hard since I read it more than 6 months ago:  "Honest Abe" has always been a larger than life figure.  How much of the legend about Lincoln is true? 

 Let's look at what is true:

1. Slavery is an abhorrent practice that lasted in the civilized world until the mid to late 1800s (although it is still practiced in Africa),
2. The Crux of the Old Testament is that the LORD GOD brought his people, Israel out of slavery.  We are reminded so with the words that begin the 10 commandments:  I am the LORD, Your GOD, who brought you out of Egypt, and the land of slavery (Exodus 20:2).  The LORD GOD instituted "the Sabbath Day". as a day of rest, where Man would not work and reflect and rely on GOD.  GOD provided food from Manna for the children of Israel in their journey through the Wilderness and up to the time Moses received the 10 commandments on Mount Horeb, until Moses had died and Joshua and Caleb followed the lead of the Lord GOD into the promised land.  Later, when Israel settled the land, the"Sabbath Year" was instituted, where the fields of Israel were to be given and a rest and lay fallow, and Israel would rely on the Grace of GOD through the harvest of the previous year for enough food to carry the nation through  The Year of Jubilee," where all debts were to be forgiven and land would revert back to its original owners.  
3. While the practice of indentured servitude (where you could sell yourself into slavery or service to another to buy what you could never afford - e.g. a passage by ship to America from England), was accepted until the 1700s and 1800s, there was little difference between that practice and slavery.  
4. Debt is slavery.  But the forgiveness (emancipation) of slavery is as close to divinity as it is possible for man to get.
5. The state of Georgia was founded, with Savannah as a debtor's prison colony.

But times were changing, with the founding of the United States.  The movement of the Abolition of Slavery was starting and gaining strength.  And while most people think that the War Between the States was fought to end slavery and Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with his "Emancipation Proclaimation," these were tertiary issues that most citizens of the United States didn't care for  and were only "added" to the "Reasons for the War" when it was assured that the North would win it.  Rightfully, Americans had the guts to say that slavery was a moral evil.  However the War Between the States was fought over far more than slavery.  

The Constitution of the United States decreed that states could secede from the Untied States.  Yet, Abraham Lincoln decided that the Union of States was more important than the Constitutional right of the states to leave that union.  Many soldiers, including Southern General Robert E. Lee, a General with distinguished service in the Mexican and American War, resigned his commission in the United States Army, to defend his home state of Virginia, against what he saw as Federal Government overreach against his state.  

Many (probably most) Southerners weren't slave owners (Robert E. Lee, did not own slaves, although his Father-In-Law bequeathed his slaves to Marse Robert and his daughter.  Lee freed these slaves).  The closer you got to the mountains, the more there were dirt poor farmers, trying to eek out a living, hunting and farming on their land to support their family.  These people couldn't afford slaves.  Yet, Northerners have broadly painted all Southerners as slave owners and, therefore racists, who are less than human. 

Most Northerners didn't give a happy damn that the Southerners seceded from the Union, as evidenced by the Conscription Riots.  But, that's not the way the story is told, truth be damned.

The Abolition of Slavery didn't become a real issue, until after the Union Army routed the Confederate Army at Gettysburg, the turning point of the war.  Lincoln then gave his Gettysburg Address and his Emancipation Proclaimation (Freeing only Southern Slaves - Yes, gentle reader, there were still slaves in the Union, despite what history revisionists would have you believe).

And as I said before in this blog post, to the winner of the war go the spoils, including the right to revise history to tell the winner's story.  So, Lincoln was dieified, made into something more than a simple backwoods politician.  The 'Just Cause,' for which he championed and compelled others to fight (after the Union victory at Gettysburg) had little to nothing to do with the issue of slavery and more to make his legendary status powerful and without stain.  Because if the South had won or Lincoln had let them walk away, the United States, at least 1/2 of his power base would have left, leaving him as the leader of a small country, not 100 years old at that time.  And old Abe, was made into a "savior" of sorts with his ending of slavery (that wouldn't occur until after the end of the war  with the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox).

So, seeing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in a new light, and its attempt at the  deification of Lincoln, I could not in good conscience sing some of the verses, with the "biblical imagery."  I didn't sing and prostate myself before another "god," created by man.  I tried to be respectful and just stayed quiet during some of the verses with which I could not agree.

Having said all of this, I present you with Ludwell H. Johnson's article In Search of the Real Abe Lincoln.  I invite you to read the article, do the research into history and decide whether Lincoln was a man on a righteous mission, or just a man, who understood politics and made a political decision.  Look at the man:  Notice his "feet of clay."  Is he really a diety, a man who has transcended into "god" by taking up a righteous cause or an opportunist, who was "made into a diety' to excuse the attacks on Southerners that today would warrant war crimes tribunals and judgement of whether what soldiers did in the name of a just war was just an excuse and cover-up?  

In Search of the Real Abe Lincoln

By Ludwell H. Johnson on May 9, 2018

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No one interested in American history can escape Abraham Lincoln. Over the years the outpouring of books, articles, essays, and poems has been enormous, so much so that this form of activity is sometimes referred to as “the Lincoln industry.” With all of this attention devoted to one man, how can there be a “Lincoln puzzle”? Surely all Americans know him — walking for miles to borrow (or return) books, reading by firelight, splitting fence rails, wrestling with the boys (always winning) — this simple, rugged, honest son of the frontier, a man of the people, called by them to save the Union and free the slaves, presiding with melancholy anguish over a long and bloody war, comforting Mrs. Bixby for the loss of her sons. Is this not what they see when they go to the Lincoln Memorial and look up at that brooding giant whose somber gaze seems to penetrate the very meaning of life? Where is the puzzle?

What Americans see is the legendary Lincoln, who began to take shape when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday. The legend-making that followed must be understood within the context of the religious currents of the day, in particular millennialism. This was the belief, then pervading much of American Protestantism, that the Revelation of St. John the Divine was about to be fulfilled. The promised battle against Satan was at hand, and when Satan was bound there would begin the thousand years’ kingdom of God on earth, followed by the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgement. From the time of the settlement of New England, prominent divines such as Jonathan Edwards had connected the coming of the millennium with the founding of the colonies and had identified Americans as the Chosen People of God and America as the place where the millennium would begin. But the way for this great event had to be prepared by purifying society. This meant battling Satan, whose principal manifestation, to northern Protestants, was the slaveholding South.

So when the war came it was seen as nothing less than Armageddon. The favorite war song of the North, Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was filled with images from Revelation. Union armies marched south to “trample out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” (Rev. 14:19-20). The events of the war were often described as the enactment of John’s prophecies. When Richmond fell, a leading religious paper said: “Who can ever forget the day? Pentecost fell upon Wall Street, till the bewildered inhabitants suddenly spake in unknown tongues — singing the doxology to the tune of ‘Old Hundred!’ …The city of Richmond [had fallen], Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth….Rejoice over her thou, Heavens.” And so on it went. (The reader may refer to Rev. 17:5; 18:20-21.)

This, then, was the atmosphere when at the moment of his final triumph, the leader in this war against “the Beast” was struck down —on Good Friday. Two days later, on what was called “Black Easter,” from pulpit after pulpit the life and death of Abraham Lincoln were assimilated to Christian eschatology.

Here was created an important component of the legendary Lincoln. For many, Lincoln became a symbolic Christ, for some, perhaps, more than symbolic. They could scarcely help themselves, the parallels were so striking. He was the savior of the Union, God’s chosen instrument for bringing the millennium to suffering humanity, born in a log cabin (close enough to a stable), son of a carpenter. (Later on, incidentally, there were those who believed that such an ordinary man as Thomas Lincoln could not have fathered such a son, that there was a mystery about Lincoln’s paternity.) He was a railsplitter (close enough to carpentry), a humble man with the human touch, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, called by his followers to supreme greatness, struck down by Satan’s minions on Good Friday. Said one minister in his Black Easter sermon, “It is no blasphemy against the Son of God and the Saviour of Men that we declare the fitness of the slaying of the second Father of our Republic on the anniversary of the day on which he was slain. Jesus Christ died for the world, Abraham Lincoln died for his country….The last and costliest offering which God demanded has been taken.” Another spoke of his “mighty sacrifice ….for the sins of his people.” Yet another proposed that not April 15, but Good Friday be considered the anniversary of Lincoln’s death. “We should make it a movable fast and ever keep it beside the cross and grave of our blessed Lord, in whose service and for whose gospel he became a victim and a martyr.” For years after the war the rumor persisted that Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield was empty. Lincoln was also frequently compared to Moses, who led his people to the Promised Land that he was not allowed to enter, and, like Moses after viewing Canaan, was taken by death.

The preachers did have one awkward problem: the martyred president had been shot while in a theater. To the pious of those days a theater was little better than a bawdy house. What was the chosen of God doing in a place like that on Good Friday? Of all the tortured explanations and fabrications, perhaps a Springfield Baptist minister came up with the best. He testified that Mrs. Lincoln herself had told him that her husband “paid little or no attention to the actors on the stage that night. Instead, he talked with his wife about his future plans. He wanted to visit the Holy Land to see the places hallowed by the footsteps of the Saviour. ‘He was saying there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem; and with that word half spoken on his tongue, the bullet of the assassin entered his brain.’ ” As historian David Donald has pointed out, Lincoln was saved from complete deification by the American love for folk heroes, and so he developed into a combination of Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, and Jesus,

A homely hero born of star and sod,
A peasant prince, a masterpiece of God.

This towering yet intensely American character quickly became, and was fashioned into, hot political property for the Republican Party, which (during his lifetime) had by no means been composed entirely of Lincoln fans. Now dead and safely out of the way, the martyr was a tremendous asset at election time. For many years he was a Republican monopoly. Then the Democrats tried to muscle in. It was one of the “mysteries of Providence,” said Woodrow Wilson, that the Republican Party he knew should have sprung from Lincoln. And in the election of 1928 the Democrats touched the outer limits of incongruity when they bracketed Abraham Lincoln with Al Smith. The tussle for possession of the Great Emancipator continued until Franklin D. Roosevelt finally broke the corner on Lincoln stock amidst outraged protests from Republicans.

Before Lincoln’s dramatic death there had, in fact, been many Americans who had a low opinion of the man from Illinois. He received a shade under 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860, and in 1864, when the South was out of the Union and not voting, 45 percent of the electorate picked McClellan over Lincoln. He was attacked viciously by members of his own party. “The original gorilla,” Edwin Stanton called him before he accepted Lincoln’s offer of the War Department. “A first-rate second-rate man,” sneered abolitionist Wendell Phillips, and there were many more.

Although the tide turned after the assassination, even then not everyone saw him as a demigod from the prairies. One might, of course, expect something less than wholehearted praise from the devastated South. When news of the assassination reached occupied Richmond, the Union general in command ordered all city churches to hold services of prayer and lamentation. One Methodist minister arrived at his church on the appointed day, found a handful of people there, ascended the pulpit and said: “My friends, we have been ordered to meet here, by those in authority, for humiliation and prayer on account of the death of Lincoln. Having met, we will now be dismissed with the doxology, ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’ ”

Even in the North there was by no means unanimous acceptance of the nascent legend. People who had known and loved him could not swallow the unfamiliar Lincoln they saw springing up before their eyes. Chief among these was a man who would have a lasting influence on Lincoln scholarship, William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner for sixteen years before the war. He believed that his friend’s true stature was best measured in the light of the whole truth, and he abominated what he saw as the sickly sentimental prettification of the man he had known so intimately. Herndon’s own recollections plus those of others he assiduously collected were the beginning of the search for the real Lincoln. His efforts were attacked ferociously by the guardians of the legend. The battle was on, and it has continued to this day.

The points of controversy include Lincoln’s personality and character as well as his actions. His religious beliefs have always attracted interest. Was he a believer or a scoffer? If the former, did he accept Christ or was he a deist? How did the spiritualist seances held in the White House fit in with his religion? Men of the cloth agonized over such questions. They also engaged in an unseemly struggle to claim the president for their respective denominations.

Was Ann Rutledge the love of Lincoln’s life? And did her death plunge him into one of history’s most renowned cases of melancholy? Or was Lincoln depressed because he suffered from chronic constipation, as one of his law partners believed? Was his home life with Mary Todd at least reasonably satisfactory, or was it a living hell? Did he tell off-color jokes because he was at heart a frontier vulgarian, or did he use laughter to soothe a sensitive and suffering soul?

Was he really a humble man even in the White House, he of the shawl and carpet slippers, or was he a cold and calculating manipulator of men, moving them about as remotely as he would pieces on a chessboard, driven by a quenchless ambition, a “little engine that never stopped”? Did he knowingly provoke hostilities at Fort Sumter, bringing down upon the country a dreadful war that left 650,000 dead and half the country in ruins? Or was war thrust upon him by Southern hotheads at Charleston? Was he a principled statesman, or was he a politician who operated according to the rule that what was good for his party was good for the country? Was he a strong president who steadfastly guided the nation through its darkest night, or was he content merely to float with the political tide? Was he a commander-in-chief who demonstrated his military genius by leading the North to victory, or was he a politically motivated meddler who spoiled the plans of professional soldiers and so prolonged a bloody war? The list of controversies could be extended indefinitely.

All of these questions are difficult, and the scholars seem little closer to definitive answers than were those who knew Lincoln personally. In recent years, however, a new tool has been employed, one that some believed would at last solve the enigma of Abraham Lincoln. This new technique is called psychohistory; its practitioners apply psychoanalytic methods to those who have crossed the Great Divide, confident that their true motive may at last be discovered. Not everyone, it must be said, has unlimited confidence in the results. Having seen batteries of skilled psychiatrists disagree in open court as to whether the accused is sane or looney, skeptics wonder about the reliability of such methods when directed at someone who has been dead for a considerable number of years. However, it is perhaps only fair to give a couple of examples of what psychohistorians have revealed about Lincoln.

One presents the following thesis: The America of Lincoln’s youth was like a big family that venerated the memory of the Founding Fathers, who had established and bequeathed to Lincoln’s generation a great nation. How did Lincoln regard these giants? In a speech given in 1838, Lincoln revealed inner conflicts, Oedipal in nature, consisting of an unconscious jealousy of the Fathers he consciously venerated. This jealousy was unacceptable; to resolve the ensuing conflict, he projected his feelings onto a “bad son” (Senator Stephen A. Douglas) whose policies threatened the Union, that priceless gift of the Fathers. So Lincoln defeated the bad son, but fulfilled the Oedipal dream by achieving an even more illustrious immortality. The war completed Lincoln’s dream by destroying the old nation of the Fathers and erecting a modern nation of which he was the Father.

Another psychobiographer’s venture makes much of an incident that Lincoln mentioned in a brief autobiography he wrote in 1860. Recalling his childhood, Lincoln said, “A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the log-cabin, and A. with a rifle gun standing inside, shot through a crack, and killed one of them. He has never since pulled trigger on larger game.” He then goes on to tell of his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, and so forth. Believe it or not, this simple incident is fraught with hidden meaning. “Such a juxtaposition of memories suggests an association between the wild turkey and his dead mother. Both are helpless and both die.” Lincoln’s statement that he never again fired on “larger game” becomes “deep remorse,” that is, guilt not because he killed the turkey, but because of his infantile sexual longings for his mother, whom he wished to possess. He killed the turkey (a rather suitable stand-in for Thomas Lincoln), and his mother also died. This was the punishment for young Abe’s forbidden love. One can only wonder what Lincoln’s reaction would have been to this excursion into his psyche. Probably it would have reminded him of a little story.

The failure of scholars to reach a generally accepted synthesis of the real Lincoln has led to an irreverent suggestion, probably facetious, that it may be well to go back and take the Black Easter sermons as a point of departure, especially the ones that saw so many extraordinary parallels between the lives of Lincoln and Jesus. This is the hypothesis: A few years ago, a medical doctor at a West Coast university concluded that Lincoln had suffered from a genetic disorder called Marfan’s syndrome. The characteristics of this condition include a long, lanky, spiderlike frame and other physical traits associated with the president. Other effects are cardiac and circulatory failure, a feeling of coldness, a heavy pulse in the legs, and so forth, all of which are said to have afflicted Lincoln during the last months of his life. Melancholia is also typical of the syndrome.

The diagnosis is in itself intriguing, but (so this theory runs) it takes on a much greater, even a cosmic significance when juxtaposed with two other discoveries. First, a medical expert who has examined the famous shroud of Turin concluded the bodily type imprinted thereon, plus evidence related to the crucifixion, showed that Jesus also suffered from Marfan’s syndrome. Second, in their book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln(!) claim that the bloodline of Jesus, through the children he is said to have had by Mary Magdalene, has been preserved into modern times. If one assumes that Lincoln was a lineal descendant of Jesus, says the originator of this theory, no wonder it has been so hard to understand him. Perhaps he can be known only by faith, not research. Should scholars, even psychohistorians, rush in where angels fear to tread?

Needless to say, the legendary Lincoln has been as impervious to such lampooning as Mount Rushmore to a peashooter. Yet there has been one question about Lincoln that has in recent years come closer to tarnishing his fame than anything else. This is his position on the race question. The reason is obvious. Lincoln had promised a new birth of freedom, but as the civil rights movement gained momentum after the Second World War, it was obvious that the descendants of the slaves freed so long ago were still at the bottom of the heap. Inevitably there was renewed scrutiny of the words and deeds of the Great Emancipator in hope of finding guidance and inspiration.

What then was found, or rather rediscovered? Although Lincoln was opposed to slavery, he was also opposed, as he told the voters in the 185O’s to social and political equality for blacks, whom he wished to colonize somewhere outside the country. There was no room for interpretation; his language was explicit. “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly ail white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races.” “Make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this.” “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” And as for colonization: “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.” In the very midst of the war, he told a delegation of blacks who came to see him in the White House that “we have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.” He urged them to lead their people out of the country. There would have been no war, he said, had you not been among us.

None of this was new, of course, but the context was new. Attitudes that were commonplace in the 1850s were taboo in the 1950s, and there ensued much discussion of Lincoln and the race question. At one extreme, some blacks accused Lincoln of being just another “honkie.” At the other, his defenders hastened to explain away his apparently racist sentiments and policies. It must be said that Lincoln’s admirers have not handled this delicate subject with nearly as much adroitness as the man himself. The explanation most of them rely upon is that he did not really believe all those unfortunate things he said; he was merely bowing to political necessities, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on a future when there would be true equality between blacks and whites. To pursue this ultimate goal he had to get elected; to get elected he had to come out forthrightly for white supremacy. Others believe that even if Lincoln was less than enlightened at one time, nevertheless he “grew” during the war, moving ever closer to the equalitarian ideals of today. For evidence they point to his last public address, in which he regretted that the new Unionist constitution of occupied Louisiana had not given the vote to those blacks who were “very intelligent” or who had served in the Union army, although he was pleased by Louisiana’s establishment of public schools for blacks as well as for whites.

To many people this did not seem like much “growth.” Unfortunately there is no evidence that he went any further. His desire to do so has to be taken on faith based on the conviction that whatever Lincoln did, his motives simply must have been impeccable. Lack of new evidence inevitably makes the arguments quite repetitious. Despite great ingenuity and, it must be said, occasional tampering with the facts, we are not any further along in reading Lincoln’s mind about race or anything else than we were thirty years ago.

To the writer, the most interesting aspect of the Lincoln puzzle is not what his real motives were, since we can never know that, but why they matter so much to so many people. Is it that the purity of Lincoln’s motives is indispensable to a belief in the righteousness of the Union cause? And if so, why then is it so important to believe that the cause of the Union was righteous? Is it that Americans wish their country, which many think was wrong in its last military crusade, to have been right in this one, which marked the beginning of modern America—their America? If Lincoln was not an equalitarian and the cause of the Union not particularly righteous, if the mystic chords of memory to which Lincoln appealed in his first inaugural resound to nothing more than politics as usual, do we lose our sense of identity as a nation? Do we lose our sense of mission, the belief — Lincoln’s belief — that the American way is the last best hope of mankind? And if we do, what then? Perhaps that is the real puzzle.

This article was originally published in the 1987 Summer Issue of Southern Partisan magazine

Guest Post: Steven Greenhut, Orange County Register, via REASON Magazine=> Rail Transit Is a Dead End, but Social Planners Keep Pushing for More

Full Disclosure:  I'm a Railfan.  I like trains; Freight Trains, Passenger Trains, High Speed Rail, Light Rail, Narrow Gauge and especially Steam Trains.  I've volunteered at Railroad Museums, been a member of the National Railway Historical Society, bought tickets and ridden Excursion Trains, both steam and diesel powered, "Chased," photographed and made audio and video recordings of special trains.  I've ridden Steam and Diesel Trains on the Strasburg Railroad, Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern, Great Smokey Mountains Railroad, Western Maryland Scenic Railroad as well as in amusement parks, such as The Maggie Valley Railroad (long gone, since 1964?) and Tweetsie Railroad.  I've even chased and photographed the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus Trains before they discontinued running the Circus Trains within the past 2 years.  But the idea of High-Speed Railroad and Commuter Railroads, both pushed by the Obama Administration, and the repercussions they bring, have soured me on both.

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Rail Transit Is a Dead End, but Social Planners Keep Pushing for More

Government planners do not understand markets, so they promote overly pricey projects that fail to meet our real-world transportation needs.

Steven Greenhut | February 1, 2019

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It has been around 15 years since Orange County tried to build a $1 billion light-rail system that would have gone from one suburban parking lot to another. It would have moved around half of 1 percent of the county's commuters. What I remember most about that incredibly shrinking Centerline was that while it was supposed to reduce congestion overall, it would actually have increased congestion along main thoroughfares.

That was my first up-close encounter with the Cult of Transit. There is nothing wrong with expanding bus service and building new rail lines—provided they actually enable people to get where they are going. However, urban planners' fixation on transit stems more from social engineering than transportation engineering. The latter develops projects that enable people to get from Point A to Point B. The former builds projects designed to change the public's behavior—prodding them into getting around in ways the planners believe is best.

If you've got time on your hands, peruse the details of virtually any road-funding bond measure and see how much of the new tax revenue goes to roads—and how much goes to bike lanes and other alternative transportation methods. I remember when Gov. Gray Davis was at a ribbon cutting for a stretch of the 210 freeway near San Bernardino. Commentators declared that after that opening, the era of road building was over. No wonder congestion has only gotten worse.

Despite the planning community's long-running embrace of transit, the latest data suggests the public prefers to get around in their cars and SUVs. Using statistics from the Federal Transit Administration, transportation expert Randal O'Toole summed up the data in The Hill: "Ridership declined in all of the nation's 38 largest urban areas. Transit systems in Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Miami, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Tampa-St. Petersburg all suffered double-digit declines, with Austin losing 19.5 percent and Charlotte 15.4 percent despite being two of the fastest growing urban areas in the nation."

That's stunning given not only the $50 billion in subsidies that transit systems receive each year—but the Herculean attempts by urban planners to promote higher-density living through proscriptive land-use policies and tax subsidies, as O'Toole added. Transit systems work reasonably well in traditional cities such as New York and Chicago, but look at the design of California's metropolises. Commuting patterns go every which way, which makes it tough to develop an effective transit system to meet our needs.

Have you noticed how Californians move up and down the state?

They take Southwest Airlines, which offers low-cost, quick flights serving the major airports. Yet former Gov. Jerry Brown had focused his attention on building a $100-billion high-speed rail system that, if it ever is completed, will have ticket prices higher than airfares and will take nearly twice as long as flying to get from the Bay Area to Southern California. What is the point? The answer echoes my earlier point: Politicians and planners use public money to change how we live in pursuit of grandiose goals, such as slowing global warming. Easing cross-state travel is important, but if that were the primary goal, our leaders would consider a variety of practical—but boring—ideas, such as improving air service in hard-to-reach places such as Bakersfield, the Central Coast or Redding.

I think of my attempts to take transit to go from my exurb to downtown Sacramento. It would involve driving to a station 20 minutes away, paying for parking, buying a ticket and waiting for a train. It would take longer and cost almost as much as just driving downtown directly and parking. That train might make sense in the urban core, but not in the outlying areas, yet officials love to lecture us about our supposedly unsustainable reliance on driving.

This highlights the real problem with transit. Planners, not consumers, drive it. Real private enterprises—as opposed to firms receiving taxpayer-funded subsidies to build government-directed projects—would never build a rail system based on an "if we build it, they will come" model. They would build systems that meet customer needs rather than fulfill wishful fantasies.

Furthermore, O'Toole refers to our current approach as "big-box transit," which involves "moving people in 60-passenger buses, 450-passenger light-rail trains or 1,500-passenger heavy-rail or commuter-rail trains." This approach is the result of union pay scales and government's inefficient and centralized approach to transportation.

Opening up the marketplace could result in myriad, small-scale alternatives, similar to the way that Uber and Lyft have disrupted the taxi industry. Government planners only understand taxing and regulating and do not understand markets, so they promote overly pricey projects that fail to meet our real-world transportation needs. Until planners figure that out, expect those transit ridership numbers to keep falling.

This column was first published in the Orange County Register.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He was a Register editorial writer from 1998 to 2009. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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I grew up in Charlotte, moving there in October of 1967.  It was a moderately small city.  There was no I-77 or I-85.  But as the area grew, Charlotte wanted to be like Atlanta.  The city leaders wanted the "Bright Lights and Big City" that was Atlanta.  Atlanta had a Pro Basketball Team, and Charlotte needed a Pro Basket Ball Team.  Then Charlotte got a Pro Basketball Team.  Atlanta had a Football Team, Charlotte needed a Pro Football Team.  Atlanta had a Regional Transit Authority and got Light Rail (MARTA).  Charlotte got a City Transit Service (CATS) and eventually would get a Light Rail System, but first there was the Charlotte Trolley.

The Charlotte Trolley was the initial attempt to get light rail.  First they claimed the original Southern Railway "R" Line that ran from the Charlotte C-D Yard next to North Davidson Street, under the 30th Street Bridge, down to just beyond Tyvola Road, where the new "R" Line met with the old line that ran through the city.

The Light Rail was first run with a Trolley from Greece, while an original Charlotte, Southern Utilities Trolley Car from the 1930s, that had been used as an apartment was restored.  It was still kind of a Museum Operation (you could ride from "the South End" Trolley station to one uptown and return, but you couldn't commute on it or get off anywhere else), with a cummins diesel trailer power car to provide electricity, before the catenary was put up) .  Then the City actually bought 3 Trolleys, that looked like the original 1930s Trolley.  I took my wife and kids to ride and we actually got to ride one when it was brand new.

Then Charlotte got a Light Rail Grant, with new Siemens M.U, cars, electrical sub-stations, a double tracked line from just north of Pineville, NC at I-485, all the way to the UNC Charlotte campus, with heavy rail and concrete cross ties, an overhead Catenary wire, Signals, a respectable Light Rail Facility (next to the Bus Maintenance Facility) on South Boulevard, and another on North Davidson Street, near the original Norfolk Southern Railroad terminus in Charlotte.  Where they hadn't appropriated the old "R" Line (from Woodlawn Road South, due to the cooking oil refinery (that was C & T Refinery and is now owned by Cargill) to Pineville, a parallel Double Tracked mainline was installed next to the freight stub line into the refinery.

The line from the Center of the City, South to Pineville passes through Dilworth, "the South End," Sedgefield, Collinswood, Madison Park, and Starmount neighborhoods as you move further South, before getting to Archdale, Sharon Lakes and into the north end of Pineville.  Most of these neighborhoods are demographically upper middle class, with Sedgefield having been the hottest piece of Real estate on the east coast.  But they were once low cost, low rent neighborhoods.  Apartments and Condominiums are growing up on South Boulevard, where there once we're businesses.  To say that this area (out to Starmount) has been gentrified is partially true.  But, with the coming of the Light Rail, many people who were moving into Charlotte from the Northeast and already were accustomed to taking the light rail or subway to work, this was marketed toward them and a hence fore unknown demand was made to order.

When the line to the northeast  to UNC Charlotte, via the NoDa (North Davidson Street) neighborhood was built, NoDa was getting going, but getting there was accomplished by going through the historic Belmont neighborhood (near Parkwood Avenue), which was barely starting to be gentrified the Plaza (Road) section near Sugar Creek Road was likewise still rough and only beginning gentrification.  But then it passed through the edge of Hidden Valley, a neighborhood that started out as white, quickly turned black and even more quickly developed a drug and gang problem.  A good part of the neighborhood is turning hispanic, but it's not being gentrified.  As the line passes out of the edge of Hidden Valley, you get more high end apartments, eventually passing the University Memorial Hospital (part of Atrium Health Care) and terminating at UNCC.

At the stations, it is announced to keep your electronics and personal property close to you, implying that they could be easily stolen.It's no wonder that the light rail ridership is off, with the new addition of the northeast section of the CATS LYNX Blue Line

But, what bothers me the most about the light rail is that the street traffic has been purposely slowed down, in order to "encourage drivers" to take the light rail train.  The speed limit on North Tryon Street, between the end of the I-85 exit to US 29 and Old Concord Road has been reduced from 45 MPH to 35 MPH.  And on the south end of the LYNX Blue Line between the New Bern Street and Scaleybark Road Stations, the light rail line crosses the southbound lanes of South Boulevard twice at grade in a 1/2 mile section.

So the LYNX Blue Line has been a real estate boon to developers in Charlotte, who built apartments and condominiums.  It will probably speed the gentrification along the North Davidson Street sections of the Belmont neighborhood and the northeast section  of the Plaza, before Eastway Drive and old Concord Road.  There is a 200 home development being built between the old Concord Road Station and the McCullough Drive Stations.  But traffic is getting worse and Hidden Valley won't gentrify any time soon.  I don't see ridership growing on the north end in my lifetime (about 25 - 30 more years).

The Greatest National Sin: Forgetting Your Purpose and Failure to Finish Your Job

I read an article from the great History Professor, Victor Davis Hanson, detailing the vision and actions that have made President Trump such a great President.   A friend suggested that we need someone to tell the public the story of Trump and his accomplishments.  I rebutted his assertion that we need someone to tell Trump’s story in the election of 2020.  I respectfully disagree.

The 2020 election isn’t and won’t be the problem for Trump or the nationalist Americans who voted for him:  He’s safe for the 2020 round of elections, because the American citizens who voted for him remember that a vast left wing conspiracy decided to stage a coup d'état and void the will of the people who elected him.  They haven’t forgotten that key factor - yet.  Much like Great Britain in World War II, our Churchillian Bulldog, Sir Winston Churchill (or maybe the late Sheriff Buford Pusser might be a better all-American example), Trump, although he doesn’t smoke a Cigar, nor does he drink to excess in public, is still in the midst of the incomplete, unfinished battle, where he calls out his enemies with Tweets.    

But, it’s only a matter of time, until those who elected him forget why they elected him.   It will happen when most of his work is done, the mission is nearly complete and the battle is seemingly won, at the end of his Constitutionally limited terms.  Just before the final nail is driven in the coffin containing the monster that came so close to killing us.   The danger of his mission will be forgotten and the course that has been mostly corrected.  Then the public will lose focus and the slow creeping slide toward socialism will rear its head with mediocre candidates (like George H. W. Bush, after Ronald Reagan) to continue to take us to our oblivion of a national perdition.  Having failed to find another leader with the same vision and stomach for the battle, to which he could pass the baton of leadership, Americans will forget his accomplishments, only to remember his “vile tweets,” uncouth and unbecoming behavior that is “beneath the dignity of the office.” They will forget that we chose him as our champion, specifically because he brought the fight (our fight) to our mutual enemy.

Our example here is Europe after World War II.  

• Instead of unleashing Patton to finish the job and defeat Leninist Marxism, we just didn’t have the stomach for it.  So we throttled our real leaders and deposed  them (or killed - many  claim that the car wreck that paralyzed Patton and shortly thereafter took his life was planned).  This allowed a dying enemy to recuperate and return from the dead.  
• Churchill was defeated, because he was a warrior, and England decided that the time for war was over and past.  We were civilized, and refused to finish the cruel job at hand.  
• General Douglas McArthur tried again during the Korean War, only to be rebuffed and told to stand down.  He resigned his commission over the difference in opinion.  

And what did these decisions get us?  A Cold War and Germany, who now dominates the European Union economically, having decimated Great Britain’s economy.

The greatest “sin” any civilization can have is to forget and deny its greatness.  And the English speaking civilizations are ALL GUILTY of this infraction.  Our heroes are only remembered after they’ve expired and we notice we’re sliding down that slippery slope towards perdition.

Get ready.  In 2024, we start sliding toward oblivion again.

On Being a Red Neck

I often identify as a Red Neck.

Most people do not understand why and attribute it to my Southern, Scots-Irish Roots, similar to Jeff Foxworthy's definition as being "gloriously unsophisticated."  I'll plead "guilty as charged" to that comment, but it's an infinitesimally small part of my being a Red Neck.

Red Necks are also disparagingly considered as part of the "poor, rural, laboring class."  Guilty again.  I'm not too far removed from the farm as to forget how farmers live, spending their lives in the sun, often getting sun burned.  But farmers are famous for using everything until it can't be used any longer.  It's only then when they've used up every part of what they've purchased or grew and at that point, they "parted the item out," keeping what can be repurposed and scrapping the rest.  I've also never been blessed with an abundance on money.  It is stewardship, and yes, I'll plead guilty again.

But the term Red Neck is related to rebellion...Believe it or not, in China.  As my 9th grade (junior) high school history teacher related the story, during the Boxer Rebellion, those that rebelled against the authority identified each other by tying a Red Bandana around their necks during the fighting.  As they were routed in their rebellion, they wished to blend back into the crowd and took their bandanas off.  Little did they realize (at first) that the dye from the Bandana had stained their necks and could not be washed off.  The authorities simply rounded up the "Red Necked" citizens and executed them.  So, am I a rebel?  In many ways, yes.

What I've tried to choose in life is to me "more real,"instead of having more money.

More Proof that Container Traffic is leaving the West Coast and Moving East, via the new Panamax Lane of the Panama Canal

In the May 29th digital issue of Railway Age, this was a headline:  

Plans underway for “largest single-terminal container facility in the western hemisphere”

A Hapag Lloyd vessel with a capacity of 13,300 twenty-foot equivalent container units is worked at the Georgia Ports Authority Garden City Terminal in Savannah, Ga. (Georgia Ports Authority/Stephen B. Morton)

The St. Louis Regional Freightway and the Port of Savannah are forging a partnership to create a new connection between the St. Louis, Mo., region and what aims to be “the largest single-terminal container facility in the western hemisphere.”

To cut to the chase, Savannah, Georgia is the fourth largest container gateway behind the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach California and New York/North (New) Jersey.  The Port of Savannah is now marketing itself and has identified St. Louis as the HUB with which it will start to serve as a Demand Center.  The Port of Savannah is betting (with good reasoning) that it can ship containers quicker and cheaper to St. Louis than can the Twin Ports of LA and Long Beach.  First the trip from Savannah to St. Louis is shorter than the trip from LA/Long Beach, California.  Second, the geographic impediments (Mountain Ranges and Rivers) it needs to cross are less of an obstacle from Savannah than from LA/Long Beach.  And third, It costs significantly less to unload containers in Savannah than iy does on the west Coast.  Savannah is planning to be the LARGEST INTERMODAL TERMINAL IN THE US BY 2020, which will make it less costly and require less time to ship intermodal containers from a ship docking in Savannah than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere.

Quoting the article:  

John Trent, Senior Director of Strategic Operations and Safety at the Georgia Ports Authority, which owns and operates the Port of Savannah, talked about the new rail service—he said it would be an attractive alternative to shipping by rail from the West Coast to St. Louis. He cited research that revealed the cost to shippers using the new service would be $300 to $400 less for each container moved—and the total time in transit would be comparable. He added that the rail service would be consistent from Savannah, a distinct advantage over more traditional gateways.

“We offer a premium, lower-cost option and, in addition, we provide that consistency,” said Trent. “We believe we have a viable solution to not only support existing business in the St. Louis region, but also to grow business in the St. Louis region.”

Mary Lamie, Executive Director of the St. Louis Regional Freightway, and other St. Louis-area freight industry professionals are excited about the project.

“I cannot overstate the potential of this new partnership and the opportunities it can create to develop stronger links between our region’s world-class freight capabilities and national and global supply chains,” Lamie said.

Say good-bye to transcontinental Intermodal train service.  The only problems Savannah will have is the capacity of the railroads that serve the port.  And don't think that Mobile, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Miami, Port Arthur and Charleston (SC) aren't waiting and watching for a chance to step in, when the rail traffic from Savannah slows their ability to unload containers to St. Louis.

Now let's see which Marketing Hub Savannah targets next....

George Orwell’s 1984 Meets Fast Food

George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, introduced the world to Newspeak...the perfect way to say nothing, while appearing to say something profound or important.

The other day, my wife went by the local Bojangles’ restaurant franchise to get a breakfast biscuit and drink, while on her way to help her parents.  She hadn’t finished the drink when she got back home, and it showed up on the kitchen counter, before it was used up and trashed.  Here is a picture of the “newspeak” message that was found on the back of the cup, with a message designed to comfort/satisfy the "greeniacs" who live among us:

Did you read the message on the cup carefully?  It’s more than a little nebulous, designed to comfort the end user/buyer and relieve any guilt of purchasing and using a product that isn’t "green."  Would this message work for you?  

I have a few questions.  What constitutes 92% degradation?  I can shred the cup in a few minutes (Max).  Is turning the cup from a molded form into vermiculite a 92% degradation?  

This is Corporate Bull Shit to try to appease "the Greeniacs."  With what passes as education today, it might just work....

However, let's have a little remedial education , to enlighten those who might not have thought this process all through.  With any process, there is waste involved.  This occurs in nature and in manufacturing.  In running an internal combustion engine, there is waste heat, rejected to the air around us, and waste exhaust gases.  

In nature, there is waste when nuts are grown, as the shells are not edible.  When we eat, our bodies produce waste excrement.  Waste by definition cannot be used.  In some cases, it's harmful.  In nature, most waste bio-degrades, and is eventually reused.  With manufactured goods, we try to make stuff that can bio degrade and return to nature.  Sometimes it doesn't work.

There are always trade-offs in life:  Opportunities are missed, and other paths are chosen.  In the case of disposable drink cups, the choices are Paper, Plastic or Stryofoam.  Paper is probably the most difficult to make, because of the weight of the paper stock and the "waxing" that is applied to the paper to make it waterproof.  But it biodegrades much more completely than styrofoam.  The trade offs are the insulation factor of the styrofoam as compared to paper stock.  Styrofoam keeps drinks hotter or colder than paper can.  It requires less ice in a cold drink in. order to keep it cold.  

That isn't saying that "recycled styrofoam" doesn't have a use.  Ground up Styrofoam is turned into Vermiculite and added to potting soil to keep it from packing and allowing air to get into the soil keeping microbes healthy in the soil.

Plastic is the least biodegradable option at this time.

As citizens of this planet, we're called to be good stewards of the resources that we live with.  It's foolish and short-sighted to have the attitude that "the next generation can figure out what they'll use.  We're going to use what we have now, and waste our resources.  It's considered unethical for parents to leave their children with less than what they had.

So, we make our choices in life.  The choice is yours:  McDonalds, who uses very little if any styrofoam in its packaging, or maybe Bojangles that uses styrofoam or even Dunkin' Donuts that uses plastic.  Choose wisely, but don't sweat the choice.

President Trump, the “Adult in the Room,” Cancels the Federal Grant for California High-Speed Rail

In my E-mail this morning, was this headline from the International Rail Journal Magazine:

Trump administration withdraws $US 1bn California high-speed grant

May 17, 2019
Written byKeith Barrow

CALIFORNIA is preparing to launch legal action against the US government after the Trump administration withdrew nearly $US 1bn in grant funding for the state’s high-speed rail programme.

So what did the State of California think would happen, with a Businessman and Builder, who’s made his living building construction projects, as President of the United States, when California decided to cancel its High Speed Rail project, for which a Federal Grant had already been issued?  

California applied for a Federal Grant to help pay for a High Speed Rail project from L. A. to San Francisco, during the Jerry Brown Gubernatorial Administration.  It was granted during the Obama Presidential Administration.  Once Gavin Newsome became Governor of the “Bear Republic,” he (correctly) decided that the State of California could not afford to pay to finish the project, with its projected costs spinning out of control, and announced its termination, leaving a partially constructed right-of-way in the Central Valley of California, from Merced to Bakersfield, going from “no where” to “no where.”  This violated the terms of the Federal Grant Contract, so the Trump Administration withdrew the grant, threatening to start collections on the amount of money already wasted on a project that that never met its goals, and likely will never host a railroad, to probably become an intrastate highway right-of-way(!).

Full disclosure:  I’m a railfan.  I like trains.  High-Speed Rail in California, connecting San Diego, Anaheim and Los Angeles with San Francisco and Sacramento would have been “cool,” and possibly even been the “seed” to extend High Speed Rail over the Siskiyou to Portland, Salem, Tacoma, Seattle and to the Canadian border near Vancouver, British Columbia.

HOWEVER, even as a railfan, I understood this project was doomed from the “planning stages,” simply because the California HSR had decided to try another route out of the Los Angeles Basin, instead of the tried and true route over the Tehachapi Pass (building a parallel line to the current Union Pacific/Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad line that’s been around for over 100+ years).  They were going to build a new route with la 16-mile tunnel, through the Coast (Mountain) Range and across the San Andreas Fault. Additionally, California NEVER managed the project.  Even today, the project does not yet have a route selected over the Pacheco Pass that would once again cross the Coastal (Mountain) Range and the San Andreas Fault a second time, in order to enter the (San Francisco) Bay Area through Gilroy, San José, and Millbrae into San Francisco.  And I consider the fault of this financial debacle to be laid directly at the feet of the Obama Administration, at the very least, for not to requiring AMTRAK to administer and lead the project to control the money that was spent.

The cynical tax payer that I am says “enough!”  With the American economy about to go into the toilet because of unrestrained spending, and with Social Security running out of money in the near future, we don't need to squander precious funds.

I look forward to California challenging the Federal Government in court over the termination of the grant.  Maybe California should have Silicon Valley corporations fund the completion of the project, even if it means changing the scope of the project and going to Elon Musk’s Boring Company and turning it into the world's first “Hyper-Loop” project.