Obscured American: Hank the Christian constitutionalist

America has become an eviscerated country draped in a gigantic flag. Day by day, its culture becomes more grotesque and obscene, a luna park of lunacy. Leached of essence, it burps up slogans, but who’s convinced?

What defines America, exactly? Paul Craig Roberts narrows it down to the Constitution and Christianity, “All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.” And, “The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States would be a different country, and Americans would be a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution and assaults on Christianity are assaults on all of us.”

You’re not going to get away with that in most American universities! In this nominally Christian country, Christians are routinely caricatured as buffoons and fanatics. They don’t wear crosses as much as burn them on African-Americans’ front lawns. Don’t show them Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, or they’ll torch the nearest chopped liver joint.

These thoughts about Christianity and the Constitution were triggered by my recent encounter with a 70-year-old black man, Hank. Twice a week, he stands outside for about ten hours to inform us all of our systematic degradation. On Mondays, you’ll find Hank and his large sign at UPenn, while on Thursdays, he can be found near Independence Hall, right outside the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Hank was dressed very shabbily, and I suspect it’s not really due to poverty, but neglect. He’s simply too preoccupied with his thoughts to bother. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Hank is also wifeless.

My father was mostly a truck driver. My mother did domestic work when she was able to, when she wasn’t home raising children. I had two brothers and a sister. When we were able to take care of ourselves, when we could go back and forth from school, my mother worked.

Back then, you could walk the street as a nine-year-old and not worry about being kidnapped or raped. People can’t do that nowadays. The atmosphere has become so fearful and hostile for everybody. It’s considered child abuse to not keep an eye on your kids.

We came along. We had wonderful Christmases, wonderful Easters, a wonderful grandmother, wonderful cousins. Easters were happy occasions, and our grandmother, we would go visit her. I’m not saying everything was peach and cream, but it certainly wasn’t all this horror and mess, and all this negative stuff.

I went to a parochial school in a Negro neighborhood, bordered by the Irish. I went to a high school that was probably 80%, 90% Italians, Irish, Polish, everybody, you know, whites. Also, most of my teachers in grade school were nuns and priests, so they were white also.

The neighborhood stores were Jewish, some were Italian. We did have a few Negro shops, and the door-to-door salesman were a mixed bag. They were colored and whites.

It was safe enough then for people to go door-to-door and sell things. The men who were driving horse and wagons were a mixture. I had experiences with all kinds of people.

One of our closest friends was Billy Lee. He was a white kid who was brought up by a Chinese family. That wasn’t even a consideration. There was no discussion at all of race, in my experience. Billy Lee was friends with my older brother, but he was a friend of mine too. My brother worked in a Chinese restaurant from the time he was 12-years-old.

After high school, I went to a seminary. God has always been important to me.

I never got married. I was reading Jeremiah the other day. God would not allow Jeremiah to get married, because he wanted him. God said in the first chapter, “I ordain you from your womb. You’re going to be my prophet, and I’m going to make you a destroyer.” Well, he didn’t make Jeremiah a physical destroyer of Israel, but he made Jeremiah the one to preach the destruction of Israel.

I enjoyed being around people. I worked some years in a department store, and the people there were very friendly, very nice. The owners, everybody was really friendly.

Mostly, I worked in power generation. I was a maintenance worker at Limerick and Peach Bottom nuclear plants. We maintained all the equipment, pumps, turbines, generators, etc. There was a constant replacement of parts. I also worked at coal and oil plants.

When I was growing up, there wasn’t an emphasis on everything being about race. Throughout human history, people have disliked somebody for whatever reason, racial reasons, but it wasn’t drilled into you by the news media day after day, after day. You didn’t get it at school that race is all there is about life.

My daily life wasn’t filled with any racial animosity or discomfort. I went to church. I was in the Boy Scouts. We went to a camp in the Poconos. One time, somebody said that they put us in this lousy campsite because we were colored, but there were these Jewish kids who were using the same facility, and they were saying, “Maybe they assigned us this campsite because we’re Jews!” It wasn’t serious.

I’m not saying we had a life devoid of any racial remarks or comments, but it was never taken seriously. It’s like the word nigger. When I was growing up, I hardly ever heard my father or mother mention the word. I didn’t know the word. One time, I heard the word nigger roach, so I thought nigger roach was some kind of insect!

We sat around and talked about baseball. Nobody made a big deal about the word nigger. I could think of one or two occasions when I was called that, but it wasn’t something I built my life on. You had Irish being called micks. You had Italians being called dagos. It wasn’t anything serious. Nobody made a major case about it. Now, you’ll go to jail for saying “nigger,” you are so bad.

It was a more civil society in the 50s. There were problems in the southern cities in terms of legal segregation, which they got rid of. You had instances of lynching here and there, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I understand that lynching took place not only against blacks, it was also done on whites, but they’ve blown it up to be a white-on-black thing.

Anything that they could find to be negative about whites, they did, especially in the South, so the governor down there was blocking people from going to school. I’m not saying it wasn’t something serious, but you had all these other schools that were not being blocked. In the South, you got the University of Mississippi that wasn’t being blocked, and you got all these schools in northern cities that were not being blocked. All these blacks were going to Columbia, Penn University, but they made it out like it was some national calamity.

Yes, the laws were unfair, so they corrected them, and that should have been it, but they harped on it in the media every year. They had all these shows and features on ancient racial unfairness, over and over and over and over. It was unnecessary.

Now they go on and on about slavery, but when I was in school, I didn’t hear about slavery until, I think, 7th grade. My parents and my parents’ parents never talked about slavery. They talked about the Phillies and the Milwaukee Braves. These were people who were tailors and truck drivers. They were professional people. You just didn’t hear this nonsense. Today, children go to school and all they hear about is slave ships and all this slave nonsense. It’s extreme and it’s unnecessary.

There are more important things in life than to keep bringing up somebody’s great-great-great-grandfather’s miserable experience. All tribes, all people, have had some experience with slavery. In America, it was the Christians who actually abolished slavery. It was abolished because Jesus Christ said, “Love your neighbor.” So the Christians who abolished slavery are persecuted the most for being slave owners.

Throughout the world, particularly in Africa, there is slavery, even today. It never stopped being a slave continent. Sudanese Arabs have been enslaving Sudanese black Christians all throughout the 20th century, yet all these phonies in this country ignore it. The NAACP ignores it. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was the founder of the group, he joined the Communist Party before he died. He was a Communist all his life, but this isn’t talked about.

All they want to talk about is what the white man did, what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did, but they grew up in a world where there’s always been, from the beginning of mankind, slavery. It was considered acceptable and moral.

Aristotle, Plato and pagan natural law taught that slavery was OK. All throughout Asia Minors, they believed it. In Asia, they believed it. Koreans kept slaves, and the Chinese did. When the Christians understood from Jesus Christ that it was wrong, and they started to abolish it, these enemies of God turned their wrath on the Christians who abolished slavery.

Jefferson and Washington were not proponents of it. They derived wealth from it because there it was. You grew up in a household and there were slaves from your father and from your mother, etc., but as they grew older, they understood from the teachings of Jesus Christ that this was not right, so they sought to undo it, but all these people who hate America and hate the views of Jefferson and Washington portray them as evil slave owners.

Even today, there’s this Arab group in the Middle East that’s enslaving women. Sex slaves, raping little girls and nobody’s talking about it. Obama is having his coffee and steak, and he doesn’t give a hoot.

This new obsession about race is used to manipulate black people in particular. Black people in the cities, coming from the South, were looking to maintain their tradition, which was home and the family, but many caved in to the circumstances. In the city, they were tempted with lax, easy, lenient punishment for committing crimes.

When judges were not enforcing the laws, many blacks began to suffer. When behavior breaks down in one instance, it breaks down in other areas. Blacks became not responsible for their children and for their families, so they would leave their wives, or they were impregnating girls and not taking care of their children.

The earlier society with black people had traditional mores, traditional rules and behaviors. It was a much better society, much more civil. I remember as a child that there were one or two black families in the neighborhood that people felt you should not associate with, but overall, that was not the case. What has happened is that that one or two black families became the majority.

When I was growing up, you did not hear “racism,” or all these other governmental terms. There was no “diversity.” It was America. We were colored or black, but we were Americans. You certainly didn’t hear “African-Americans.”

You heard a lot of positives about being an American. Joe Louis, a very important black fighter, he talked about how proud he was to be an American. Jackie Robinson was proud to be an American. All that was instilled in us. You didn’t grow up to hate your country.

There wasn’t antagonism towards law enforcement. Like any group or organization, you’re going to have bad apples here and there, but in general, there was no disrespect for police officers. There wasn’t this: He’s the enemy so we have to correct and change him.

I stopped watching TV a long time ago because it’s all anti-God. The commercials have taken on the same air. Anything that’s vulgar and profane, if it insults God, Jesus Christ, they’ll push it out right away.

When I was growing up, if you said, “Oh, my God,” people would say, “Don’t take God’s name in vain!” Today, they teach everybody to say that. If a movie comes out, and the scriptwriter only has “Oh, my God” 100 times, they’ll say put it in 200 times, so you grow up hearing oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Everybody is saying it. It’s no big deal.

All these T-shirts I see, “Just Do It,” so right away, it conveys a sexual message. There was a time when you would be appalled at a little girl saying a cuss word. Now, you’ll hear them say mother this, mother that. It’s no big deal.

All this came about to make sure that future generations would not have the Christian restraints of their parents. Stalin talked about it. Alinsky talked about it. Lenin said, “Give me the children and I’ll change the world.”

They all know the way to corrupt and demoralize the people is through the young. Don’t let them hear about righteousness, don’t let them hear about God. That’s why today they are walking around with “Just Do It.”

Anything that conveys sex is good. My parents and grandparents would have been appalled. Another thing is, in Catholic schools or public schools, if you misbehaved, your parents expected the teacher to give you a whopping, and if it got known when you came home, you got another whopping.

It was expected that girls should behave better than boys. Today, they teach you, “Well, you’re a girl but you’re just like a boy, etc. There’s no difference. Don’t make a big deal about it. Do whatever you want to do.”

There’s no value in being chaste anymore. A woman can stand around in all kinds of crooked postures. Back in the day, a woman would be ashamed to be standing around with a crooked posture. They’re taught to be crude, vulgar and profane. We’re seeing the results of two generations of deliberate, godless, profane, vulgar teachings in American society.

And all these new words. “Transsexual” didn’t exist 50 years ago. These words are made up, which means the things they are talking about are made up. Just like “homosexual,” that word was coined probably in the early 20th century. Prior to that, you never heard such a term. They made it up, then they tell people, “You are a special kind of person. This is who you are. You were born this way.”

All of a sudden, you are no longer a man or a woman, you are something else. God didn’t just make men and women, he made all these different genders, with rights. They make these things up, then they go to the government and say, “You need special laws for these people.”

If you are a man who loves a man, you are still a man who loves a man. You are not something called a homosexual.

If you are a woman who thinks she is a man, you are still a woman and not a transsexual.

What they’re aiming for is to get back to pederasty. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association is a favorite of the ACLU. Before too long, they’ll say that it’s good for a 12-year-old to have a male mentor.

Pederasty was encoded in the 8th Century B.C. by this fellow, Lycurgus. He enacted it into law in 8th Century Sparta. Athens took it up later. Other Greek cities began to do that too. You get that from Plutarch, from his Lives.

Plato borrowed from Lycurgus, but we never hear about Lycurgus because he’s so close to pederasty. People who are smart want to sneak this stuff in. They don’t want to hit you with a broad brush. They sneak around the corner.

Under God’s law, there are some things man cannot do. God says, “No! No! No!’ so George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and all these big-headed people who thought so well of themselves, they went to work to push God out of the way. Julian Huxley, Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler were in the same group. They all believed in natural law. John Dewey, too. How he got to be in charge of American education, I’ll never know.

Marx dedicated his book to Darwin. When Darwin came out with evolution, they loved that. “Oh, wow! Now, we don’t need that Genesis stuff!” They believed that everything depends on what man . . . What did the Greeks say? Yes, man is the measure of all things. They believed that man decides what’s right and wrong, and they weren’t going to have God get in the way. All these people believed in eugenics, of course, Nietzsche said, “The heck with man.”

So this is what they’ve been doing since the end of the 19th century. We had Ralph Waldo Emerson working on it in America. All these forces have been converging together against American society, which is God-based, and against the American Constitution, which is God-based.

Freud was another problem. Psychology has done a terrible thing, because right away, they said, “We’ve got the answer, and it has nothing to do with God.” Freud and Jung said, “Let’s look at the human mind. Let’s push God aside, and let’s figure out what this thing is all about, on our own.”

God already told you what the mind of man is. They said, “We’ve got a better idea. Man is divided into these compartments. The subconscious, the unconscious, etc., etc., and this is the libido,” so they built all this other stuff up, just like with evolution.

They build up all these scenarios, from their own minds, put it in a book and go to the university, “This is the truth! If you give me the correct answer to this, I’ll make you a B.A., or a B.S.!”

A lot of the illness or the evil in society has been deliberately injected into our people through the media and the schools, especially by those people who are hidden. I’m thinking of the planners like John Dewey and Antonio Gramsci. He was an Italian Communist. He said he was going to make American culture stink. He was going to make American culture so bad that it stinks.

There’s a DVD that’s put together by a state legislator, Curtis Bowers. It’s called Grinding America Down. It’s very good in terms of what some of these Communists, these philosophers, what their intent was for America, and they have succeeded.

The Communists have infiltrated American institutions, the schools, the government, the parties, to get rid of the godly foundation of this country, so they can use their own selfish power to run American society. Communism wants to control people, and it wants to control their assets, their riches.

We’ve had Communists in this country since the 1920s, especially with the ACLU under Roger Baldwin, who was its Communist founder. The ACLU is working every day to continuously corrupt political parties, and they’ve been very successful with Democrats, and the Republicans have not been much of a resistance.

William Penn said, and this is from Romans 13, in the Bible, that government comes under the authority of God. He cited the origin of government in God’s Bible. This is where government comes from.

Benjamin Franklin said that, “Except the Lord build the house, they build it in vain,” citing from the Bible. He was talking about the Constitution of our country.

People think of Ben Franklin as some kind of anti-Christian. He was a Deist, they say. That’s ridiculous! Ben Franklin was a Christian Presbyterian governor who wrote proclamations about prayer in the classroom.

Ben Franklin said on June 6th, 1787 that “I’ve lived a long time, and the more I live, the more convincing proofs I see of God’s governance in the affairs of man.” That’s in James Madison’s notes.

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote that “atheism is not known in America,” but they don’t teach that. Where did the Founding Fathers come from? Did they come out of nowhere? The founding churches built this country, not the Founding Fathers!

In these gift shops, they have these little books about Benjamin Franklin, but it’s all trivial nonsense. Or go into the Bourse Building. A year or two ago, they had a big statue of Franklin, down in the basement. You can ask him a question, “Ah, how many children did you have, Ben?” You push this button and Franklin will answer. It’s just incredible, the length they’ll go to make our Founding Fathers look silly!

A year ago, they had a big display sign of the Founding Fathers drinking champagne. I said to the security, “Do you know the administrator to this building? Well, you tell them I’m out here, and I’m protesting this caricature, this aberration of our Founding Fathers.” He said, “I will.”

There used to be a cardboard caricature of Benjamin Franklin, with a mechanical arm that was going up and down, selling hamburgers and hot dogs, in front of the Bourse Building.

At the American Philosophical Society, they have a statue of Benjamin Franklin dressed in a toga! They have him dressed as a pagan!

Columbus said, “The Lord put it in me.” Now, you’d think everybody would know at least one quote from the founder of America? They don’t know one quote from Christopher Columbus!

Thomas Paine was not an American citizen. He was a Britisher. He was successful when he wrote that pamphlet, Common Sense, which excited a lot of people because it talked about sunshine patriots, etc. There was a lot of good prose that excited people. As a matter of fact, Common Sense was suggested by Benjamin Rush. Thomas Paine wanted to call it, Plain Truth, but Rush said, “Common Sense is better.”

Thomas Paine was great until one day, he decided to write The Age of Reason. He lost friendships because he blasphemed God. Paine showed that he was a Deist, if not an atheist altogether. Thomas Paine is celebrated by people in this country who wants to continue to tear down America.

I stop in Washington Square, and I see people reading all this trivial nonsense about William Penn. On a sign, it mentions how William Penn was concerned about making a green city.

The man came here because he was persecuted in England and put in jail! He came here to build a haven for people who were being persecuted! Also, the Quakers were at the forefront in the abolition of slavery, and that should be on the sign, not some nonsense about how he lay out some plants for a park in the city! But that’s what they do. They take you away from the important things, and give you the trivia and entertainment. It’s done deliberately.

There is no such thing as a separation of church and state! They made it up, and they’ve gotten everybody to believe it. In 1947, they had a ruling in the Supreme Court, separation of church and state. Before that, God was everybody’s authority. Authority in America was God, then they started this nonsense in the Supreme Court.

We’re living under Communists, a Communist in the White House, and this Communist Hillary Clinton, and all these other fools.

That’s why we’re in this mess today. The world doesn’t have the respect it had for America anymore. All these Christians are being slaughtered, raped, destroyed, and people are saying, “Where is America?”

America didn’t have to save South Korea. America went there out of the love that Christ taught, “Love thy neighbor.” In 1949, Truman said, “All men are created equal because we’re made in the image of God.” A couple years later, when South Korea was under attack, they came to Truman’s office and cried, and that man said, “You’ve got our troops,” and he sent MacArthur.

He didn’t have to. America does these things out of a loving, godly heart. We had a reputation of going to the rescue of people who were in trouble, people who were being besieged by an enemy, by an oppressor. That was our reputation. Today, you have in the Middle East all these slaughters going on, and people are saying, “Oh, my goodness, what happened to America?”

America used to be a force for righteousness. Now, it’s acting like an evil nation, because we have an evil man in the White House. Obama doesn’t care. He was brought up as a Communist. His father was, his mother was, all of the family.

Stalin gave them direction. Stalin said, “Break them down in their religion, break them down in their morality, break them down in their spiritual life, and America will crumble inside.” Stalin was right.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America.