False Charity

/ bigdiff / Leave a comment

Some rational thinkers have trouble understanding moral thinking. It’s not that they’re immoral (or ‘against morals’), but purely rational thinking is amoral (literally, ‘without morals’). Often the two ways of thinking align and arrive at the same result, but since they are fundamentally different, they can, do and should diverge on many issues. A corporation must act in the financial interest of its shareholders, and while issuing a press release about a modest charitable act may only indirectly further that interest, the goal remains strictly mercenary: to improve the public image of the company to sell more widgets. It’s foolish to expect a corporation to act against their financial interests, voluntarily.

Frequently, national park units begin with regular folks who are interested in preserving some bit of history or nature for future generations, like some high schoolers and others who decided that the story of their town’s concentration camp should be remembered. These are acts of charity, volunteering time or money to provide a needed public service. Later, eventually, politicians follow the example set by their constituents, but in a great many parks, the origin story comes down to the generosity and foresight of a few, regular people who cared enough to do something good. Often, the work of some of our most moving sites come down to single, individual caretakers, like the Reverend Paul Carter at Harriet Tubman’s or Paul Cole at Kate Mullany’s home. Clear, moral thinking is what drives such devotion to public service.

On the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes visit sites that seem particularly designed to serve the interests of wealthy, neighboring property owners. Eugene O’Neill’s house in California and the Green Springs in Virginia seem to be examples of this false charity. If the reason you support a park next door is primarily the rational self-interest of improving your property values, and you are not interested in encouraging members of the general public to visit the site, then you are thinking rationally and not morally. I can think of examples in every region of the country where folks seem to go out of their way to preserve their historic neighborhoods for their own interests, instead of the general public. Sometimes it’s impossible to park, park roads are left in poor condition to dissuade drivers, signage is poor or even misleading, and fences and gates block walking paths that once were open to all.

I believe that the definition of charity requires that the recipient be “needy”. Unfortunately, the US tax code has a far broader definition for tax-exempt organizations, one with plenty of loopholes.

“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”

That means that a church that primarily benefits its pastor financially is exempt, for example. An elite private school, offering horseback riding or sailing, need not admit the poor to enjoy being tax free. If the beneficiaries are primarily needy folks, then I believe that our tax policies should not burden those organizations. But when the beneficiaries all own multi-million dollar homes and go out of their way to restrict public access to historic sites or public monuments, then I think they are benefitting from federal designations or public tax dollars unfairly. I love the symphony, opera and ballet, but if the organizer is tax exempt, like Wolf Trap, then I expect them at least to make some tickets available to needy people, like Wolf Trap below does.

If there were requirements that a minimum percentage of the people who benefit from the services offered by tax exempt organizations be low-income, then we would see a dramatic increase in free field trips from schools in poor communities to beautiful and important places in wealthy communities. And I believe that would be an excellent use of tax dollars.

Green Springs National Historic Landmark District

/ bigdiff / 2 Comments

I don’t expect every site to be Yellowstone, but this one is very disappointing.

In 1935 the NPS acquired development rights to the land from property owners in this historic area of Piedmont in Virginia, making this an affiliate site. Green Springs is known for a healthy mineral spring, for some horses bred 200 years ago, and 3 dozen historic farms and other buildings dating from 1735 to 1920. The oldest is Boswell’s Tavern, frequented by Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry. Lt Col Banastre Tarleton raided the county with his cavalry in 1781 during the Revolution.

However, the historic properties are all owned privately and are not open to tourists. So there’s nothing for visitors to see now. Boswell’s Tavern now looks like an unremarkable, updated private residence with an old chimney. There’s no museum or guide, and many of the houses, like the one above, are behind fences, hedges and hills, to be invisible from the public roads. Someday, perhaps, this will be a worthwhile place to visit, but for now, there’s no point.

Mid-Atlantic Region National Heritage Areas

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

There are 16 NHAs in the Mid-Atlantic; 8 in Pennsylvania alone. Well worth exploring these areas while visiting parks in the region.

Susquehanna National Heritage Area

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

The Zimmerman center above is the launching point for summer boat rides on the river in the background, a colonial era museum, the trailhead through a Susquehannock tribal area, local HQ for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake NHT, and the HQ for the Susquehanna NHA. I’m glad I stopped here last month, since the staff cleared up some of my misconceptions.

The museum here does a good job in describing the contact between the colonial explorer John Smith and the natives. The staff also confirmed my suspicion that Captain Smith could not have traveled to all the points up river shown on his trail. Even his small exploring boat could not sail up waterfalls and over rocky shoals. So Smith’s historic trail map does not match the explorer’s actual historic trail. The NPS describes the trail as “a water-based trail following the coastline of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers”, which would be great, if this were a scenic trail, but it’s a historic trail, named for a real explorer. [No word yet from the NPS on fixing this.]

Amidst handling school groups with aplomb, the staff also nicely answered my questions about the broad heritage area. If you’re interested in the colonial era, you should visit the county history museum in York, which has several colonial buildings, including a tavern, where our revolutionary leaders, the Continental Congress, fled during the British occupation of Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778. While exploring, you will likely see both Mennonite and Amish community members, such as around Loganton in the scenic area up the west branch of the river.

Moral Thinking

/ bigdiff / Leave a comment

If you begin with the intention to determine whether something is right or wrong, you have begun thinking morally.  If you apply moral principles fairly to evaluate the social benefits and long-term consequences, then you are thinking morally. When you arrive at a well-justified course of action that advances the greater good, then you have achieved a moral decision. Simple.  

Moral thinking is often confused with spiritual or instinctual thinking, but it is more exacting than simply having a conscience, feeling guilty or a desiring to conform to social norms. If your conscience tells you that you have just made a moral error, then you should have thought before acting. Others confuse morality with submission, obedience and inculcation, but, if you’re letting someone else make decisions for you, then you aren’t thinking. Such herd dynamics are also instinctual, and following instincts without moral thinking causes more moral problems than it fixes.

Moral thinking is a conscious effort to decide what is right and wrong, from immediate individual choices to broad, long-term social consequences.  Moral thinking is what we should learn first at home, in pre-school and when we learn about religion.  But it is not simply learning rules; it is understanding why a choice is wrong. We must learn the lesson, extrapolate from it and then apply it well to a new situation. We take the moral of the story and use it to do good. Moral thinking is used to guide our behavior, to create fair rules and laws, and to question social problems and demand change.  

Neither should moral thinking be confused with rational thinking. Philosophers try to prove altruism logically and often decide it is a self-serving illusion. Poppycock. All day, every day, good people make moral choices to benefit others without notice or reward, including sacrificing themselves in ways small and large. Rational analysis can dissect and analyze these acts without ever being able to understand the moral motives to alleviate the suffering of others, to be kind to strangers or to lose so that unrelated others gain. Because moral thinking has different motives, uses different techniques and has different goals, it is difficult to comprehend with only logic and rational analysis.

Some argue that moral judgement is the sole province of the Divine, that humans either are incapable or have no business trying to make their own moral judgements and that humans must simply obey the Ten Commandments, the Bible or a delegated authority like the Pope. I would argue that we have been granted both the ability to think and knowledge of good and evil, so it would be a sin to carelessly or slothfully neglect our responsibility to use those talents to do good.

Some argue that moral thinking is hopeless, that there is no single source that everyone recognizes as being the correct answer.  Nonsense.  Even if there is no single divine rule for every issue, nor a utopian moral code hidden in the ether, it matters not.  Whether all the religious texts and great philosophers are in contradiction or not, matters not.  What matters is that humans make an effort to decide whether something is good or evil.  This way of thinking matters, perhaps more than any other.  The debate matters, getting it correct matters, and the consequences matter.  

If you and I disagree on what is good or evil, then we should have that argument.  As long as we are arguing in good faith, without being influenced by money, status, or fantasies, then we are trying to think morally.  Moral thinking is persuasive, has its own inexorable logic and its own authority, distinct from popular mob instincts.  What is good or evil may be debated, but an answer can be achieved, at least for specific topics in specific instances.  

Since we are all on the same side, we share the same fundamental, universal moral imperative: to sustain life. Since life requires diversity, we must choose to coexist and to balance competing objectives. Since each individual life is limited, we must work together to share our knowledge to pursue our joint mission and to improve not only our own lives but each other’s and also future lives.

From that simple moral framework, based on the golden rule, many moral choices become obvious. Just as your life may be important to you, others believe their lives equally important. Selfishness is being unfair to others, instead of treating people with equal respect. Our responsibility to future generations is greater than our responsibility to our own generation. Despite short run pressures, we must act for the long run good.

The purpose of moral thinking is to make a good decision or judgement to improve individual lives or society.  Whether we are thinking for ourselves or others, or about specific policies or abstract principles, moral thinking is needed to avoid making a bad choice or the wrong recommendation, or to fail to see the consequences or the underlying flaw in an idea.  We do not go through the effort of thinking morally in order to stand by and do nothing or to hurt people.  That would be immoral.  Morality requires a bias towards action, determination and courage.

We think morally in order to be good, do good and promote what is good.  We also think morally to oppose evil, fight injustice and make our world a better place.  After thinking morally, we may speak out more clearly, confidently and persuasively, and our actions may have more positive impact.   That is why we study ethics, justice, honesty, altruism and responsibility.  

Moral thinking begins with a moral objective to arrive at a moral decision using problem-solving methods designed to achieve moral results. Moral thinking takes a long, broad and deep perspective, weighs consequences fairly, has a bias towards action, is courageous in the face of popular or powerful opposition, is driven by love of life and humanity, abhors needless cruelty and suffering and sets bold, well-justified priorities that convince people to take the correct path forward.

Moral thinkers view their way as correct and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought morally.  

Delaware Brown v Board Affiliates

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

Delaware has three schools that are recently designated NPS affiliate sites of the Brown v Board of Education NHP in Kansas.

The very small school in Delaware above, Hockessin Colored School #107C, was funded by one of the du Ponts—owners of palatial Longwood and Nemours estates nearby—for the purpose of segregating black students from their extravagantly outfitted white schools. Hockessin students were also given cast-off old textbooks and denied transportation. Louis Redding sued on behalf of one of the students in Bulah v Gephart in 1951, winning the case in 1952, and later combining several other cases on appeal to argue Brown v Board of Education at the Supreme Court.

Claymont High School below, now a community center, allowed 12 African American students to attend in 1952, the first students effectively integrating into a segregated state school system after a legal challenge that became a key part of Brown.

Previously, African American students from all over Delaware could only attend Howard High School below, often without public transportation. Brown recognized that segregation in and of itself was illegal discrimination in public education. Read more about the road to equal education.

New York in Photos

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

Celebrating the Empire State!

African Burial Ground NM, Castle Clinton NM, Eleanor Roosevelt NHS, Federal Hall NM, Fire Island NS, Fort Stanwix NM, Franklin D Roosevelt NHP, Gateway NRA, General Grant NM, Governors Island NM, Guggenheim WHS, Hamilton Grange NM, Harriet Tubman NHP, Sagamore Hill NHS, Saint Paul’s NHS, Saratoga NHP, Statue of Liberty NM, Stonewall NM, Teddy Roosevelt Birthplace and Inaugural NHS, Van Buren NHS, Vanderbilt NHS and Women’s Rights NHP are all above. New York also has the Kate Mullany NHS, Lower East Side TM, and Thomas Cole NHS affiliate sites, four heritage areas—Champlain Valley, Erie Canalway, Hudson River Valley (including 5 parks above), and Niagara Falls— and parts of the Appalachian NST, Chesapeake Bay NHT, North Country NST, Upper Delaware SRR, and Washington-Rochambeau RR.

All Sites in Arizona, California & Nevada

/ bigdiff / Leave a comment

While I can’t drive to Hawaii, I have visited all the other sites in the western region, including all the sites below and these national historic and scenic trails: Arizona NST, California Pioneer NHT, Juan Bautista de Anza & Old Spanish NHTs, Pacific Crest NST, and the Pony Express & Butterfield Overland NHTs.

Arizona

California

Nevada

Robert Russa Moton High School

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

Equality is the ideal we have yet to achieve. Jefferson wrote of equality in our Declaration of Independence. Our Constitution did not recognize it. Lincoln guided the country through a Civil War for equality, but then the country slid backwards again. But we must try.

W.E.B. Du Bois had supported and tracked inequality, progress and hope for schooling in the African American community of Prince Edward County in 1898. The state of Virginia revised their post Civil War Constitution in 1902 to permit racial segregation. In 1951, the inequality had long been unconscionable. While white students had cafeterias, gymnasiums, school busses and laboratories, black students needed warm clothes and umbrellas inside tar paper shacks.

Frustrated by the systemic racism that prevented adults—who faced retribution for asking for change—from fixing the problem, the students decided to act by themselves. 16 year old Barbara Johns addressed her fellow students, banging her shoe on the podium, and called a strike, asking for cooperation and saying “don’t be afraid”. The students all went on strike, and their minister said they should contact the NAACP. Barbara Johns called Richmond lawyer Oliver Hill to help.

Their case, which lost, became part of the Brown v. Board of Education appeal, but the Prince Edward County school district refused to follow the Supreme Court ruling. A new school was built, but rather than comply with integration, even after Little Rock, the Governor of Virginia closed schools for five years. Martin Luther King visited in 1962. JFK and RFK publicly excoriated Prince Edward County in 1963. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled again, saying “time… has run out”.

Every student should know this story, which began with a student walkout to demand a new school building. I was moved to tears listening to Barbara Johns’ recreated speech in the school auditorium and thinking about their courage in the face of terrible injustice. If you can visit, go and listen for yourself. This affiliate site, a favorite of mine, in Virginia is a powerful part of our Civil Rights history.