Linda Weber, whose courage I greatly admire in tackling this controversial subject and writing a book about it, has kindly answered a series of questions about “Life Choices.”

Planet POV: Could you talk a little bit about your career and how you came to write “Life Choices?” The second part of this question is, Who do you envision as your audience?

LW:  I live and work in Boulder as a private psychotherapist, spiritual counselor, and rites of passage guide for women. I run a summer wilderness vision quest program. I have a masters in psychology and women’s studies, though I didn’t get the degree until after I had been counseling for twenty years. I see the interconnection between personal psychology, society, and spirituality, so my orientation is naturally holistic. I wrote the core of what was to become Life Choices for my masters thesis. The writing happened because of my desire to record what I was experiencing with the abortion work. As I followed it through the years, it led me to a deeper synthesis. The funny thing about books is that they know what they are before you do. I spent a lot of time catching up to what this book is. Over twenty years passed before I was ready to bring it into the world, and it was only then that a publisher appeared to make this happen.

I began my work in a New York City abortion clinic, one of the first to appear after legalization in 1970. My initial training was more like a trial by fire than a professional training. I was learning on the go, in an atmosphere of intense need. They showed us how to explain medical procedures and how to assist the physicians with the abortions, but not so much about counseling itself. I was deeply moved by the stories I was hearing from the women who were my patients. They came from all over the country, referred to the clinic by an underground clergy service that referred for safe though not always legal abortions. I thought that that in and of itself was amazing. Counseling came easily for me because I have a natural intuitive ability, so I’m self-trained for the most part. Even my masters degree was an independent study degree. I was a history major in college and an activist organizer by nature. I was interested in the flow of history and how it affected people. Those things came together in abortion counseling because both the historical and personal changes that were happening were profound. The work continued in earnest after I set up the counseling program at the women’s health center in Boulder in 1973.

As I approached the age of forty, I turned towards spiritual study and fell in love with the mountains and my sense of the spirit that moves in all beings and things. I wondered how to relate this to my feminism and my understanding of women’s issues, in particular abortion.

The writing of Life Choices, began as a reaction to what I was seeing in my counseling sessions. At first, I thought I might be writing a counseling manual or a how-to book about abortion, or maybe a historical study. But once I accumulated enough spiritual experiences of my own, I knew that the statement of Life Choices had to be much more than just about abortion. The perspective got bigger and bigger as the years passed.

The audience for Life Choices consists of anyone concerned about the issue of abortion, in addition to women who have had abortions. In particular, the book is for those who seek a multi-faceted understanding about how social issues affect us personally and what their role is in the growth and development of society.

Planet POV: You say in your book that you “believe abortion is essentially pro-life” and that you arrived at this conclusion because you’ve seen how the experience “can enrich women’s lives.” Can you address this idea and perhaps give us an example?

 LW:  The simplest answer to this is to just look around and see how many women have created successful careers that they would not have been able to have if they had been forced to give birth to every unwanted pregnancy. But the more complicated answer is more interesting to me. Abortion is part of nature. We see this most clearly when miscarriages happen. The medical term for a miscarriage is spontaneous abortion. What I am saying in Life Choices is that human consciousness—our ability to think and feel and intuit is also part of nature. We apply this consciousness to our bodily experience in order to better negotiate our lives. For women, this includes making choices about pregnancy. Thus, intentional abortion is also part of nature, and in my experience these choices are overwhelmingly on the side of improving lives—the woman’s life and the other lives that are directly affected by a pregnancy. Abortion is an essential part of creativity. This is easy to see when we think about a writer writing something and then crumpling up the paper and throwing it away or deleting it; or a painter painting, or a musician composing, and so on. When we say no to something in our lives and choose to go in another direction, we are aborting the other choice. Without the no the yes would not happen. It’s the same with pregnancy, it’s just that the stakes are high and intensely heart directed.

Planet POV:  You have a wonderful sentence in your book: “Pregnancy decision making is more basic than beautiful, more like a mudslide than a meadow.” Yet it struck me that the attitude throughout “Life Choices” is that these “mudslides” are just another part of life and not necessarily good or bad. Does this sound accurate to you and if so, how did you arrive at the conclusion that having an abortion is not necessarily a negative experience?

LW:  Yes, that’s right, that’s what I’m saying. The mudslides are definitely just another part of life and are morally neutral. They are simply experiences. Unfortunately in our culture there is a tendency to divide experiences between “good” and “bad.” I think this contributes to the denial of the important things we learn from difficult and painful experiences. As for abortion, most of the women I have met in my counseling work were overwhelmingly relieved that they could have an abortion, and because it was one of the most serious decisions they had ever made in their lives, they often grew in their understanding of what really mattered to them and became clearer about how they wanted to conduct themselves in their lives. I think that’s positive, don’t you?

Planet POV:  Another striking quote in your book is from one of your clients: “For me, abortion is like pinching the leaves off the mother plant to let it grow.” Can you explain what your client meant by this statement and what it meant to you?

LW:  That woman’s statement—the pinching of the leaves—was the main impetus for this book. I met her a long time ago, and her perceptions and point of view about her abortion had a huge impact on me. It showed me the essential creativity of life choices. I wanted to honor her and her forward thinking way. I thought it was beautiful. As for the meaning of it, that took me years to fully understand. I had to spend concerted time alone in the wilderness and a lot of time studying and practicing surrender to life processes, both my own and the manner in which the world conducts itself. What I came to understand is that life does as life does and we humans are responsible for stepping into our awareness of that and engaging with the truth of our lives in a manner that fits with the rest of nature and the earth as a whole. We need to be awake. This means different things to different people, but the truth of the movement of life into death and back into life is central. We die into ourselves in one way or another throughout our lives. It is the way life creates itself. Abortion can be a great teacher about this both on the level of personal experience and for humanity’s relationship with the earth as a whole.

Planet POV:  You frequently use the term “crisis pregnancy.” Can you explain what this is?

LW:  A crisis pregnancy usually occurs unexpectedly and causes an upheaval in a woman’s life. It is characterized by high levels of tension and uncertainty and often includes anxiety and fear. If the pregnancy is unwanted or a problem in some other way, the intensity of the crisis may be driven by a sense of not having enough time to make a decision, or in some cases, feeling unable to make a decision because no option is attractive or acceptable. Internal or external pressure to make a decision quickly can sometimes feel overwhelming. A crisis often opens the door to other problematic or difficult issues, which can further exacerbate the situation. This kind of pregnancy can be a critical turning point in a person’s life.

 Planet POV:  You describe a debate you once had with a pro-life activist who ended her arguments with the assertion: “Death is death.” You then go into a discussion about the context of death. Could you talk about this?

 LW:  The anti-abortion movement has been screaming murder about women’s choices to have abortions for some time now. They play upon the discomfort most of us feel about death and the way our society denies and denigrates the subject. They oversimplify and try to reduce complicated concepts to simple ones. Even murder when you think about it, is complicated and contextual from the law’s point of view. There are different kinds of murder that involve different circumstances; there are different levels of motivation; and there are different levels of punishment. But that’s a digression. Abortion isn’t murder. The death that occurs in abortion is tied to the relationship between the pregnant woman and her awareness of the nature of her pregnancy. Her consciousness about her body and about pregnancy is an aspect of her nature, which is part of nature. She is the responsible party when it comes to bringing life through her body or not. The or not is of course the big issue, because when she decides not to continue a pregnancy, she is causing the death of the part of her that is developing into another being. But the death can’t be compared to any other death. Because it happens in the context of her life process, her body, her relationships, and her power. No death happens in a vacuum. There is always a circumstance and situation—a context. There are always relationships that create the container for whatever the death process is, and these need to be respected.

Planet POV:  Again on the subject of death, you say, “Our personal and societal fear of the end of life makes us label any kind of death bad. A walk in Nature will quickly correct this notion.” What is it about nature that leads you to question the idea that “any kind of death is bad?”

 LW:  Death is essential to life on planet Earth. All of nature exists in cycles of coming into being and going away. Stand in a forest and you will see trees in various stages of living and dying. Same with all plants and other animals. We humans have lost touch with this and live in ways that try to separate death from life when really there is no separation. Western society has attempted to substitute technology for nature and to pretend that humans are not part of nature. One of my teachers calls this the big lie. When we remember our true nature as part of nature, we can embrace the endings and losses as part of the great mystery of life, and pay tribute to the meaning of those losses through ceremonies and relationships that honor the changes.

Planet POV:  Another phrase that jumped out at me as I read the book was “the ideology of self-sacrifice.” It seems to go hand-in-hand with another concept you discuss – the “Ideal of the All-Loving Mother.” Could you explain what these concepts mean and how they relate to abortion?

 LW:  Women often find themselves in a painful internal tug of war and feeling selfish if they put themselves first. But what feels like a personal psychological pattern is actually an expression of an old and deeply entrenched societal and historical way of meeting the world. Under patriarchy, which has been around for many thousands of years, women are expected to sacrifice themselves to care for their children and for the men in their lives. It is considered unfeminine and unwomanly not to do this. Moreover, women are expected to plan their lives this way—to marry, have children, and never put themselves first. This is changing. The pushback against patriarchal ways all over the world is about women wanting to make choices about all aspects of their lives. The choice to not carry a pregnancy to term flies in the face of the idea that it is good to sacrifice yourself. Legal abortion goes against the ideology of self-sacrifice because it suggests that being a woman is about more than having children. Along with this, it challenges the idea that any woman anywhere at anytime will be a loving and caring mother. Abortion breaks through the idealization of mothers, and suggests that in real life women are complicated and capable of creating in myriad ways, and that reproduction is just one facet of being a woman and that this is normal.

 Planet POV:  One concept that comes up repeatedly in “Life Choices” is the idea of female power. You say, “We actively express female power when we choose whether to bring pregnancy through or turn it back.” Can you explain how abortion and female power are related?

 LW:  It’s intrinsic power I’m talking about, not power over anything or anyone, but rather power within. Bringing life through the body is a female function. It’s an innate power. Part of expressing this power is to say no to pregnancies that feel like intrusions or that we know can’t be supported by our life circumstances. Saying no can sometimes be more life affirming and powerful because it requires the strength to honestly face and assess difficult feelings and circumstances and stand up to the pressures of society. Most importantly, saying no to a pregnancy is sometimes a necessary step to saying yes to stepping into responsibility for your life.

 Planet POV:  How can abortion be an act of love?

 LW:  Having an abortion is almost always an act of love. A woman has an abortion because she cares about what would happen to a baby born of that pregnancy, and because she cares about herself and others in her close circle of love relations. She may be young and not completely clear about these things, but her heart is at the center of her decision making and her mind grapples with all that is involved. She does the best she can.

 Planet POV:  You go into some discussion about the history of abortion in the United States. You mention that Colorado was the first state to liberalize abortion laws, sometime between 1967 and 1972. Roe v Wade was in 1973. You were involved in an early clinic in Boulder – can you talk a little about the founding of that clinic?

 LW:  I moved to Boulder from New York City in 1972. After Roe in 1973, I expected that clinics would form locally. The people who were organizing the Boulder Valley Clinic, which is now the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center, were community minded men and women, and skilled in different areas including medical and community organizing. They were driven by the desire to normalize and legitimize women’s experiences with abortion because they all knew how horrible it had been when abortion was illegal. They needed someone to head up the counseling program and I was someone, maybe the only one in the area, who had experience with this. Plus, I was passionate about helping women with what I had learned at the New York clinic. We had some opposition from a right-to-life doctor who kept us out of a medical building, but other than that there was no serious trouble. We found a house on Broadway near downtown and set about renovating it to suit the needs of a women’s clinic. It was an incredibly exciting and creative time. I hired 18 volunteers and trained them to be abortion counselors. They each had one patient in the first week we were open. We met incessantly to talk about our personal experiences and how best to do the counseling work with the patients. The whole thing felt more like a cause than a job and everyone was highly devoted to the work.

 Planet POV:  On the same topic as above, you mention that Roe v. Wade was a result of the pressure that mounted as more women obtained illegal abortions in the two decades before it passed. Can you talk a bit about this history?

 LW:  Illegal abortion is a truly horrible thing. It’s terribly dangerous for families as well as for women. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the laws against abortion were increasingly difficult to enforce. There were reputable physicians performing illegal abortions and clergy in all parts of the country who were counseling and referring women to these physicians. Population control advocates were actively lobbying legislators, and the women’s movement was growing in size and influence. The coalition to repeal the laws against abortion became strong enough to pressure successfully for the changes that led to the Roe v Wade decision.

 Planet POV:  You express your objection to the term “family planning clinics.” Can you explain why?

 LW:  I don’t object to the term family planning clinics or family planning, I just think it’s an incomplete term. Most people, especially young people, are not thinking about planning a family when they seek out birth control. They are thinking about and planning sex. I discuss this in the chapter in my book called Sexual Planning. By coining this term I’m encouraging people to think as realistically as possible. One of the results of legal birth control and legal abortion is the emergence of more awareness about sexual matters and a greater willingness to discuss sex and sexuality. But it’s a long road, and there is still a great deal of fear and avoidance when it comes to these issues. Family planning programs raise people’s awareness about sexual health, which I believe is the main reason they are in the crosshairs of conservative political movements.

Now we have another, highly-readable offering that brings us up to date on current happenings.  God, Guns, and Greed: A Dangerous Path for America by Leah Burton outlines and details political threats to democracy from Dominionism as they are being embodied by the current crop of GOP presidential and other candidates.  The book is available today Sept. 4.  Leah is my friend and colleague, and, truth in advertising – I have content in the book but am NOT making money from it.

Drawing from years of research and a personal familiarity with the Alaskan politics that spawned the Star of Dominionism – Sarah Palin – Ms. Burton offers accessible insight not just to C Street but to the breadth and depth of the New Apostolic Reformation as it seeks power, high and low, throughout America.   Quoting from participants, she lets their words show the passion and commitment Dominionists have to taking over America– and the world.

Because Dominionists believe that they are “the chosen” they seek not an expanded view of democracy but a narrowed one.  They seek to make America either a theocracy or at least a Christian country, in either case with them at the helm of the seven essential parts of the nation – The Seven Mountains – including government, the military, family, education, culture, media, and business.  The elect will make happy alliances with the non-saved or even non-believers (think Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers) just so long as the infidels defer to and promote the interests of  the True Believers.

Americans tend to respect other people’s religions.  We have been immune from holy wars, and while discrimination (restrictive covenants etc.) are part of our history, the gradual movement has been to fulfill Constitutional promises of a land free for all believers and non-believers alike.

That is the key target of Dominionism – undoing the first amendment and imposing a religiously-biased government upon everyone.  God, Guns, and Greed explores the range of successes from school boards to campaigns for the White House that has brought Dominionism perilously close to capturing power over the nation.

This is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand who got elected in 2010 and is vying for power in 2012.  These are not your “values voting” candidates who can occasionally forge compromises.  These are the absolutists who will never back down, never share power, never yield to the idea of universal rights, full democracy, and a more equal nation.

Read this book.  And be very afraid – then work to stop this march of the theocrats.  Act as if your very life depends on stopping this force because it does.

You may order God, Guns, and Greed online at www.godgunsandgreed.com.  It will be in chain and independent bookstores in early October.

While scientists remain puzzled as to the cause of  the dramatic decline in honeybee populations in North America and elsewhere, some are speculating the cause may very much be human related; however, not technological, but  philosophical. It appears that “Randism”, a trend that has recently exploded on the American political landscape may similarly have caught on among our bee brethren. It seems that the reason for the decline of hive populations is that many bees are now practicing “the virtue of selfishness”, keeping the nectar they collect for themselves and not returning to the hives they emerged from. These bees consider the notion that they should return for the benefit of the whole colony “evil altruism” and look down upon the “Hive-ists” who would act for a goal larger than themselves. They argue that “there is no such thing as a species” and that it all comes down to individual bees and their pursuit of their own happiness. When it is pointed out to them that this could result in the extinction of honey bees and have cataclysmic results on worldwide crops, they scoff and say, “and this is my problem how?”

Meanwhile, more religious-minded bees are concerned about how to carry on in the aftermath of what they regard as “The Great Rapture” that has decimated their populations. “Left Bee-hive”, the bee adaptation of the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, paints a bleak picture of life on earth after the Chosen Bees have been taken up to their Maker.

So, will it be Rand that the bees turn to, or the Good Book? “Why should I care?”, a distraught bee who agreed to be interviewed for this article lamented. “It’s so hopeless that I just may go off somewhere and sting someone!”

While I’ve never been a fan of poetry, I’ve found myself growing fond of this motley collection of verses. Naturally, many more in my year have had the opposite reaction. After all, how long can you spend reading, dissecting and interpreting the same works before either reaction takes hold?

Of all the poets that I’ve studied for my course, Emily Dickinson is by far my favourite. So much so that I’ve accidentally memorised the poems of hers that we’ve been reading. There is something about both her style and themes that I find so elegant and simple, that I just can’t resist.

But, I’m not writing this post to talk about Dickinson. Instead, I wish to tell you about another poet, whose works we’ve been studying: Eavan Boland. A poet of Irish birth and a Trinity college graduate, Eavan Boland has been a respected and well-regarded poet for several decades now. Not that that mattered to a bunch of snarky teenagers – or the snarky teacher for that matter.

No, the thing that mattered most to the class about Eavan Boland – for about five minutes anyway  -was that she has Feminist leanings. The horror! But, I’m not writing to give you a treatise on the Feminist themes of some of Boland’s poetry. I’m writing to present to you one of Boland’s poems. A poem that I personally found to be rich in its utter simplicity.

I do not presume that you have not heard of Boland or read her poetry – I’m aware that many of you on this site are of a poetic bent – but I certainly hope that you enjoy it if you haven’t.

This Moment

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

Eavan Boland

Image via Wikipedia

I’m a big James Bradley fan.  The author of Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys hooked me with the first book, a loving examination of his father’s role as one of the participants in flag-raising at Iwo Jima that we are all familiar with.  The book was very interesting and obviously a labor of love.

His next book Flyboys was of a different tone altogether.  This book not only examined the little-known story of a doomed aerial assault on an impregnable Japanese-held anti-aircraft battery on a remote island in the Pacific.  George Bush Sr. was one of the pilots shot down in this attack and traveled with Bradley to the island during the research for the book.

The tone of the book was much different.  Much of the book was devoted to the political issues inside of Japan at the time, how the Japanese people found themselves in this situation and why the Pacific theater turned out like it did.  It was an interesting, critical look at a complicated set of issues and had political overtones missing from the first book.  I found the book fascinating and learned things about Japan, its people and its history that I had not known before.

When Bradley’s third book, The Imperial Cruise came out, I bought it immediately.  It reflects Bradley’s determination to find out what the real catalyst of the Pacific war was.  When I was finished I was angry.  Very angry.  The new picture I had of President Roosevelt, then-Secretary of State Taft compared unfavorably with even George Bush  and his neo-con fanatics.  The new picture I had of our administration, policy, and nation was something that Howard Zinn and Mark Twain made reference to, but never with this level of detail.   The following is part book review, part re-examination of period and person in our nation’s history that affected nearly every aspect of our foreign policy for the last hundred years.

I was so affected by this piece of work and the subsequent research and reading I did, that I felt compelled to share.  I look forward to your comments and feelings about this topic and encourage you to read Mr. Bradley’s book.  It’s changed how I view our nation, our role in the world, and my own feelings about much in it.  More importantly it has made me want to learn more.  The best books always prompt you to keep searching rather than be satisfied that you’ve found the answers.

With the recent events occurring in Japan, now seemed the perfect time to express my thoughts.

“In the summer of 1905, President Roosevelt sent the largest diplomatic delegation to Asia in US history.  Teddy sent his secretary of war, seven senators, twenty-three congressmen, various military and civilian officials and his daughter on an ocean liner from San Francisco to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, Korea, then back to San Francisco….Over the course of this imperial cruise, Theodore Roosevelt made important decisions that would affect America’s involvement in Asia for generations.” – James Bradley

His goal?  Simple.  “I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean..”  The decisions he made during this time would result in numerous wars, including WW2, the Korean War, and the Communist Revolution in China.  One of the seminal events at the center of this morass was Taft’s secret negotiation -at Roosevelt’s direction – of a secret pact to allow Japan to expand into and eventually conquer Korea, while simultaneously serving as mediator between Russia and Japan, who were at the time fighting an enormous war for territory.  One year later, Roosevelt would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  The following 4 wars that the US slogged through in Asia can be traced back to many of the ham-fisted unilateral decisions by Roosevelt.  Ultimately, Teddy Roosevelt bears a striking resemblance personally and professionally to a more recent president George W. Bush.  Like Bush, he left our nation with a basket of snakes to manage.  Unlike Bush, he left with his reputation intact.

Like Bush, Teddy was east coast patrician, but frantically cultivated the image of frontier rancher.  We have a rich library of Teddy in buckskins on a studio stage, replete with gun, knife, and steely stare.  We have no pictures of Teddy enjoying his favorite past time, tennis.

Teddywas shaped as many were in the late 1800′s by the dual natures of Muscular Christianity and racial attitudes.  In the first of four books in a series about the west, the first Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Roosevelt wrote of how the west was “won”: “The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself.  It was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them.  Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took part therein.”

Roosevelt and many in the government at the time viewed as duty the United State’s westward expansion of the Aryan race westward across the Pacific Ocean.  Not only do we owe it to the ignorant savages of the “waste lands” of the Pacific to conquer them, but to civilize them as well.   Congressman William Fell Giles of Maryland said it best: “We must march from ocean to ocean…straight to the Pacific Ocean, and be bounded only by its roaring wave…It is the destiny of the white race, it is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race.”

First came President Polk’s invasion of Mexico, a democratically elected government with a Constitution modeled after the U.S.’s.  After three long brutal years, the war was over.  The U.S. could have claimed all of Mexico, but powerful Senators like John Calhoun of South Carolina objected.  “We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race….Ours sir, is the Government of a white race.”  This invasion served as a model for many more to come.

By 1893, the end of continental expansion and a serious Depression created an environment where overseas expansion was seen as a cure-all for depression, over-civilization, and legions of unemployed men.  Henry Cabot Lodge expressed dismay at the growing gap in colonies between the US and the rest of the civilized world: “The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their future expansion and their present defense all the wast places of the earth.  It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race.  As one of the great nations of the world, the United States must not fall out of line of march.”

Roosevelt came to Washington with similar attitudes firmly in place and looking for a fight.  As the under-secretary of the Navy under President McKinley he delivered memos to the President warning about dire situations within Cuba, and a speech to the Naval War College in Newport, RI extolling a “peace through strength” speech in which he mentioned “war” sixty-two times.  In September of 1897 Roosevelt lobbied the President in person three times and advocated for immediate war against Spain over Cuba and the Phillipines.  Roosevelt later wrote of this time: “In strict confidence…I should welcome almost any war, for I think the country needs one.”

After the successful conclusion of this war, the US couldn’t leave the liberated Cubans and Philipinos in charge of their own countries.  They weren’t white and therefore were unable to govern themselves.  As Teddy wrote in an article “National Life and Character” Blacks were “a perfectly stupid race” and it would take “many thousand years” before the Black became even “as intellectual as the (ancient) Athenian”.

The subjegation of the Phillipines involved indiscriminant slaughter of men, women, and children.  Gang rape of the women, and waterboarding of every mayor, priest and town official that might have information about the Phillipino “terrorists” resisting the noble civilizing ways of the American military.  As the popular U.S. Army marching song chorus goes:

Hurrah.  Hurrah. We bring the Jubilee.

Hurrah. Hurrah.  The flag that makes him free.

We’ve got him down and bound, so let’s fill him full of liberty.

Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The Republican Party, impressed with Roosevelt nominated him to be Vice President on the McKinley ticket in the next election.  The campaign slogan was, in retrospect, ominous:  “The American flag has not been planted in foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity’s sake.”

Convinced of the rightness of his cause, the destiny of his nation’s and race’s expansion a confident, muscular Roosevelt set his sights upon bigger game…..

(End of Part 1)

Related articles

• Imperial Cruise (James Bradley) (pclreads.wordpress.com)
• David Swanson: Did Roosevelt’s Racism Cause WWII? (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)