That is the title of our official state song and I would submit good advice for all Americans this week. Despite being a political scapegoat for everything the Right, including a certain former GOP Governor trying to win presidential primary votes, finds wrong with the country (except when they misappropriate tea party imagery and rhetoric), the legacy of our fair Commonwealth was solidified by my count in three ways this week.
The Confederate flag, to many a symbol of slavery and the wrong side of the Civil War, was removed, or proposed to be, from many public and private venues this week. Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery and the first state to send troops and to take fire in the Civil War. We also provided the famous 54th Colored Regiment whose exploits are depicted in the movie “Glory”. (Side note: President Obama’s eulogy of Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney is worth a watch; toward the end he sings Amazing Grace quite well.)
SCOTUS once again upheld “Obamacare” probably securing its legal legitimacy once and for all. As you know this law is based largely on one promulgated in Massachusetts and signed by the aforementioned GOP Governor who went on to make us the butt of his political jokes.
Today, SCOTUS ruled that marriage equality must be recognized throughout the United States following, albeit with a several year lag, their counterparts on the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. According to one cartoon I saw today God will not strike the country with lightening just as He didn’t in MA because all He has in stock today are rainbows:)
Now if only we could get the country to follow our lead on stricter gun controls.
We might want to take a closer look at what flies at our statehouse:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/06/24/abraham/EqlC3F8W9tPGsjP4NkWE2N/story.html
I’ve never thought of the sword and the Native figure as part of the same image as if the sword is about to attack the Indian. In fact, I’ve always seen the figure on the flag as a dignified acknowledgement of our Native heritage. If the Native population itself does object they should be given a hearing and I’m glad “Come over and help us” was deleted as that is obviously patronizing.
… that article dismisses ‘heraldry nerds’ and ‘nuance’ as well as places ‘warfare’ alongside ‘plague’ as though an equal number died from fighting as from disease.
ON heraldry and nuance: (I am not a heraldry expert), the arm dexter with raised broadsword proper (and the attendant motto) is NOT a reference to the relationship with the Native Americans but to the Revolutionary War (this seal was officially adopted in 1908) and the motto is part of a wider known saying at the time roughly translated as: “With hostility to tyranny this hand seeks, with the sword, peace under liberty.” “Heraldry Nerds” will also tell you that originally the sword was pointed up, which signals belligerence, but in the seal is pointed down which signals readiness and preparedness for either peace or war (interestingly, those who point out the Native American has his arrow pointed downward in peace won’t usually point out the same about the sword). The Native American figure, it was long ago told to me, is Squanto, a Wampanoag (or Wampanoag speaker of one of the affiliated tribes) whose help was an integral part of the survival of the first colonists. It is, if anything, homage not hostility. Indeed, the very name “Massachusetts” is a Native American name and many towns in the CommonWealth, Swampscott, Agawam, Scituate, Taunton for example, are derived from various Native American languages.
On warfare and plague: The majority of Native American deaths at that time were from plague and history disputes the reasons behind, beginnings of and extant to, the fighting. There is no doubt that the colonists had a degree of feckless arrogance to them, as did –do?– ( sic) all Europeans, and that they did, in fact, do more harm then help. But there is also little doubt that they did not actively set out to harm and that, if they but knew the harm they would cause, they would have gone to great lengths not to do so. That is, I think, far different from a deliberate, belligerent, unstinting and forceful hatred like that displayed by adherents of a ‘traditional’ Confederate heritage.
So I reject the comparisons between what flies over our State House and what flies before theirs. Ours is better, if complicated, and shouldn’t be treated as wholly the evil the other is…
And didn’t intern thousands of them on Deer Island where they died of starvation and disease. No, that didn’t happen.
I mean, you’re right about the heraldry. The sword and motto are references to revolutionary war. But to say we can just unequivocally claim a “peaceful Indian” as part of our colonial heritage is absurd.
… there wasn’t any whitewash here. I don’t know from ‘honorably’, I just know what I know. The relationship between the ‘colonists’ and the Native Americans was far more complicated that the comparison made and if the CommonWealth, in 1908, choose to highlight the help and amity Squanto represented, that’s maybe as much grasping at hope as whitewashing… But it sure ain’t Jim Crow and Bull Connor. For, what I did say was that it was markedly different to fly a flag that does pay homage to a Native American than brazen hatred flying as the ‘stars and bars’.
Snarky Sunday: Baystate Nation
“Snarky Sunday” is a reference to their usual no-snark Sunday policy.
…that moves away from something we’re noted for. In a case arising from Arizona they said it is constitutionally permissible to allow independent commissions to draw legislative districts. We may not have created the idea of drawing districts for partisan advantage, but we did give the practice its name.
I’m glad I voted for McGovern and all that, but I prefer we just let our actions speak for themselves. If the objective is to persuade voters in other states to adopt our positions, chest thumping is not the way to start.
…it’s worth mentioning that we also were first in line for “independency” as the word was then. The Adamses advocated for it before it was cool, John Hancock was the first to sign the Declaration, and it was on our soil that was fired the “shot heard round the world”.
BTW, at this writing it hasn’t happened yet, but I hope the editors will continue the BMG tradition of re-bumping the text of the Declaration to the front page.