MOTHER'S DAY, 138 Years Later...

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

In 1870, five years after the carnage and destruction of the American Civil War and during the rising bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War, Julia Ward Howe (the well-known poet, abolitionist, pacifist, social activist, and, ironically, author of the now-bastardized unofficial theme song of the GOP, The Battle Hymn of the Republic) penned the now-all-but-forgotten Mother's Day Proclamation. This proclamation speaks to all the world's mothers, the givers of life, bestowers of morality, and implores them to teach the principles of peace to their children.

Clearly, we can learn the tragic consequence of bad parenting by looking at the maternal personage of current predatoresident and crusader-in-chief, George W. Bush. Barbara Bush is responsible for the Marie Antoinettesque utterance on September 5, 2005 at the Houston Astrodome, regarding the recently evacuated victims of Hurricane Katrina:

"What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Working very well for them, eh? Indeed. But let's not forget the real gem in Babs' quote bank, that she blurted out on ABC's Good Morning America, back in 2003:

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? It's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

These disgusting, arrogant words were spoken on March 18, 2003, exactly one day before Barbara Bush's son began dropping 2,000-pound GBU-27 Bunker Busters and Tomahawk cruise missiles onto innocent, Iraqi civilians at Dora Farms, thereby signaling the illegal invasion of Iraq, which officially followed the next day. With that very first salvo, supposedly planned to eliminate much of the Hussein family (including Saddam himself), American forces murdered fifteen civilians, nine of whom were women, as well as one child. The situation has not since improved.

Barbara Bush, former first lady and mother to a murderer, once said (to Hillary Clinton, no less), "If they quote you, make damn sure they heard you." Well, don't worry, Barbie, we heard you. We certainly heard you.

Mother's Day, in its truest form, is not the Hallmark holiday of today but rather a day for peace and justice, for compassion and unity, for mercy and humanity. Julia Ward Howe called upon women to come together to commemorate their fallen sons and daughters and to find "the means whereby the great human family can live together in peace..." in a world without weapons and warfare.

Below is Howe's magnificent Mother's Day Proclamation. Read it twice and then again and then promise to teach your children to respect human life, all human life, regardless of nationality, political allegiance, religious beliefs, skin color, gender, or sexual orientation. And, oh yeah, last time I checked, you can't respect human life and human rights if you're occupying another country and its people.

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Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

- Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

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