My brother and I used to discuss the best way to die. Our two options were to die from a bullet or from an arrow. We would talk about it at length. But we never got to the part where we’re already dead and have a funeral. That would have been the next logical step. And although at the time neither of us had ever been to the funeral of a human, we had planned and carried out numerous funerals for our various pets that met their maker.

There was a special service for the Easter chicks who seldom lived past the chick stage. Now there is a funeral easy to prepare for.

A large cardboard matchbox, the kind household matches come in, is ideal as a coffin.

We’d line it with grass and carefully place the chick inside, lay more grass over his lifeless body and slide the box back into the cover.

Next we’d walk slowly in a procession out to the area prepared for the burial.

Usually the grave, fairly shallow, would already have been dug.

It would be a short but solemn service, beginning with the phrase, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to lay to rest Sammy Chick, who met his death unexpectedly in an encounter with our cat. His death was quick, and we hope painless, and he will be missed.

“He was a good chicken and didn’t make trouble for anyone.”

Then we’d lay the deceased in the grave, cover it with dirt, cover the grave with leaves from the Chinese holly and sing “Jesus Loves Me,” a suitable hymn for a chicken funeral. For we all knew that God made and loved all things, and He cared even about a baby chick.

Then we’d drive a small cross made from sticks into the ground at the head of the grave and walk away to refresh ourselves with grape Kool-Aid.

Sometimes, when we were bored, we’d arrange a funeral for a dead grasshopper found in the yard. The ritual was much the same.

So if anyone has a preference for the kind of funeral they would like, it is advisable to go ahead and plan it. Otherwise, some of the choices made might not be to your taste.

I don’t want money spent on my funeral. What a waste. Cremate me. I want the money spent on the party celebrating life. Preferably, it would be nice to have the funeral party before I die, so I can enjoy it. There has to be good music and a lot of good food.

As far as music for the service itself goes, I’d like “Rhapsody in Blue” played, one of my all-time favorites, and at the conclusion of the festivities, “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” played properly by a New Orleans Jazz band. They can march out the door after the party, followed by a procession of everyone who attended, who must all carry a parasol of their choice. And if they want to ride away in a black horse-drawn hearse pulled by a team of matching white horses with ostrich plumes attached to their bridles, more power to them.

I’d like people to dance. There’s nothing like dancing to lift the spirits.

As for the food, it has to be good.

Eastern North Carolina-style barbecue from Little Richard’s in Winston-Salem or from Wilson, N.C., or from the Center Presbyterian Church Ingathering. It’s all good. Also, steamed shrimp and hush puppies would not be amiss. Fried chicken would also be appropriate. And an assortment of excellent desserts would be much appreciated. Don’t worry about bringing a cake. Did I mention the desserts and side dishes would be brought by the guests? There’s nothing like a good pie at a party. Chocolate is always good. Lemon meringue is one of my favorites. I would like my old friend Virginia, should she outlive me, to bring her famous Dead Man’s Cake, one she takes to all families who’ve suffered a bereavement. It’s a very rich chocolate sheet cake with hot fudge icing poured over it when it comes out of the oven. It is named both for its purpose and also because too much of this dish can be fatal, and it might not be a bad idea to have a door prize. And there have to be lots and lots of flowers. But not cut flowers I’d prefer living plants and shrubs. They can all be donated to parks and places in town where a lot of people can enjoy them.

If I’m still alive for the party, I’d like to thank everyone for coming and tell them how much I’ve enjoyed being alive and how glad I am to count them as friends. No speeches, please. We all have our own stories, and it may be best to let sleeping dogs lie.

And my preacher can tell everyone how important it is to love each other, to forgive each other and to live at one with God and our fellow man.

Now, these are just suggestions. And by the way, don’t put gravel, pebbles or concrete on my grave. Y’all can spread sea shells. They’re beautiful and feed the earth. Since I might not be dead yet when we have the funeral party, I’ll wear the prettiest outfit I own. Then, if people want to say, “she looks so good” or “they really did a good job on her,” I’d be able to enjoy it.

Maybe I’ll have to go out and buy a black sequined party dress. But there will be no high heels. Life is meant to be a celebration, and no one can sincerely celebrate in high heels.

That’s the funeral I’d like to have. What’s your plan?

What if I asked you to name the most famous song that has come from South Carolina?

You’re stumped, right?

About now, you are scratching your head and thinking, “What could it be?”

What if I told you that the song is famous as the unofficial anthem of a huge social movement that affected tens of millions of people in America?

And what if I told you that the song had a huge impact globally and inspired tens of millions of people who sang it as a song of freedom and liberation in dozens of countries around the world?

And what if I told you that the song has even been adopted as the national anthem of a new county?

About now, I’ll bet you are feeling a little uneasy to think that you live in South Carolina and have no idea what song I’m talking about — right?

The song is “We Shall Overcome.”

No one knows the precise origins of the song, but we do know that it was first sung as a protest song in Charleston. In 1945, the song was sung during the Food and Tobacco Workers Union strike against the American Tobacco Company, which ran the cigar factory on East Bay Street in Charleston.

This mammoth cigar factory once produced more than a million cigars a day, and the workers who produced them were mostly African-American women, many of whom came into the city daily from the surrounding Sea Islands. They worked for low wages, in poor working conditions for long hours. And if they complained … well, you know the rest of the story.

As the five-month strike dragged on, the picketing women began to sing this simple song to boost their spirits and provide encouragement to each other.

One of the supporters of the strike, a white woman named Zilphia Horton, was so moved by the song that she submitted it for the 1948 issue of the “People’s Songs Bulletin.” Horton was the music director of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., and she played the song for the many people who visited the school. Among those who were captivated by the song were Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan. Carawan is credited with introducing the song to the civil rights movement when he later became music director of Highlander in 1959, as many of the movement’s leaders were in and out of the Highlander School.

Seeger made some minor modifications to the song and added some verses, but most importantly, he performed the song in his 1963 world tour to 22 countries — thus he is credited with spreading the song globally. And when Joan Baez sang the song before 300,000 people at the August 1963 March on Washington, the song forever earned its place not only in the U.S. civil rights movement, but also history.

Seven months later, President Lyndon Johnson used the phrase “we shall overcome” in his address to a joint session of Congress. He was urging support of his voting rights legislation just after the “Bloody Sunday” attack on marchers at the Pettus Bridge in their march from Selma to Montgomery.

And, on March 31, 1968, just before his assassination in Memphis, Dr. King used “we shall overcome” as the theme of his final sermon.

Beyond the United States, the song has played an important role in many popular struggles for human rights all over the world. The two best known examples were the Catholic protest in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and ‘70s and the student protests in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. It was later adopted by various anti-Communist movements in the Cold War and post-Cold War era, especially the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

But its global impact goes far beyond just these examples. The song has played an important role in human rights movements in India, among the Aborigines in Australia, in France, South Africa, Martinique and Guadeloupe, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Bolivia, Palestine and many other territories and nations around the world. After their long struggle for independence, in 2002 the people of East Timor briefly made “We Shall Overcome” their national anthem.

So now you know.

People far more knowledgeable than I can analyze why this song took on the significance it did. Part of it is that the lyrics are simple and easy to remember and repeat; the melody is also simple and easy to adapt for most any instrument — most importantly, for the human voice.

The power of the song’s simple affirmation of hope and determination is compelling — to many people in many circumstances in many places the world over.

This simple song, first sung in our state, has inspired, moved and sustained millions around the world in their fight for dignity and freedom.

We should all be very proud of this.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and president of the S.C. New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. He can be reached at phil@scnewdemocrats.org.

Saitta weighs in on sick leave policy

Dear Editor,

I want to respond to the article about the employee sick leave policy.

The school district gives employees 12 to 15 paid sick days a year. Employees can accumulate the paid sick days they don’t use. At retirement, the district allows employees to use the first 90 days to extend their service time by three months for retirement pay purposes. It then pays those retiring employees a bonus equal to their daily pay rate for the next 45 unused sick days. It is called a bonus because they are paid twice for those days.

For example, let’s say an employee is working 200 days and making $60,000 ($300 a day). He is given 13 sick days. Whether he takes zero or 13 sick days that year, he is paid $60,000. If he didn’t take any sick days, at retirement he would receive a bonus of $3,900 (13 sick days not used times $300 equals $3,900).

Retiring employees could retire with up to a $20,000 bonus for unused and accumulated sick days. This bonus gives employees incentive not to use all their sick days through the years and stay with the district for the long haul. It is a quite generous sick leave policy.

There is another bonus for employees who leave the district for reasons other than retirement, and this was the subject of the recent vote. The district administration recommended the board pay those departing employees $50 a day for up to 45 days of accumulated but unused sick days.

I voted against this bonus for the employees leaving the district. The district is spending a lot of additional money now to boost pay. Additionally, medical costs are going through the roof. The district pays most of those increases. Money is tight in the budget, and I’d rather see that $50 bonus money spent in the classroom or used to sure up compensation for existing employees.

Alex Saitta

School board trustee

Pickens

Sleazy and deplorable

Dear Editor,

I find it odd that while a local newspaper reported Rep. Neal Collins as lamenting that 48 people were denied access and not recognized by the state GOP, it failed to mention an important determining factor why that decision was made. We can only speculate why this omission occurred.

According to the Greenville News, state GOP chairman Matt Moore said Collins had “gamed the system.”

Obviously, not only was this recognized by all the legal participants at the meeting, but also determined to be so by the state GOP, who, by affirming the convention, overwhelming agreed that county GOP chairman Phillip Bowers did, in fact, properly follow the rules, except for a few minor errors, and that Collins and his cohorts were simply gaming the system, deliberately hiding his herded delegates from the county party for obvious reasons.

I don’t really consider this decision a “compromise,” but more of a recognition of the techniques Collins and certain liberal tax-and-spend groups behind him, loaded with former Democrats (as is Collins) will stoop to in order to hijack the county GOP and forward their progressive agenda.

We would expect sleazy behind-the-scenes activity such as this to come from Democrats, but to have backstabbing activity like this being conducted by someone who calls himself one of our own is deplorable and demonstrates a true lack of character.

Dennis Reinert

Easley

Everybody knows what to do when arriving at a four-way stop. You stop. That’s not the problem. The problem is that nobody knows when to go. [cointent_lockedcontent]The S.C. driver’s manual covers this. But either nobody in the state has read the manual. or the instructions are confusing.

The manual suggests — actually it’s the law — drivers do the following:

The S.C. driver’s manual says a motorist arriving at the intersection must yield the right of way to motorists who arrived before him, waiting his turn to enter the intersection. If two motorists arrive at the same time, if on different streets, the driver on the left should yield to the driver on the right; or if on the same street, a driver desiring to turn left should yield to the driver coming from the opposite direction.

This is all well and good, but this is not what happens.

Experience teaches us that when we arrive at the four-way stop and there are three other vehicles who’ve also just arrived, it may not be possible to tell who actually arrived first. If there are four vehicles there at the same time, chaos ensues.

If you draw it out on a piece of paper, you start with a cross. This represents the four-way stop. Next, draw a rectangle to the right of each arm of the cross. This represents a vehicle in the right lane, unless we’re in England, but we won’t even consider that.

So, everybody’s there at the same time. The driver on the south is supposed to yield to the driver to his right on the east. The driver on the east is supposed to yield to the driver on the north. The driver on the north is supposed to yield to the driver on the west, and the driver on the west is supposed to yield to the driver on the south. So if everyone follows that rule, either nobody goes or everybody goes, and there will be a four-car collision in the center of the intersection.

Now this is just according to my diagram. Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe that’s why when you actually arrive at an intersection with a four-way stop everybody is afraid to go. Usually at least one driver will motion someone through. This is also a problem if more than one driver decides to motion another driver through.

I’ve actually seen two drivers motioning each other through. Neither went through, as they couldn’t decide, so I went through. Maybe I had the right of way. Maybe I didn’t.

Matters are complicated if someone doesn’t have a turn signal on and plans to turn or if they do have the turn signal on but are unaware of that and are planning to go straight ahead.

At one particular local four-way stop, the angle on one of the arms of the intersection does not form a true right angle, so if you turn onto that road, the signal doesn’t cut off and you’re in trouble at the next intersection because you may not be planning to turn at all.

There’s an old Laurel and Hardy routine known as “Who’s on first?” The people who wrote this routine were also responsible for writing the S.C. driver’s manual. Many of us find it just as helpful but sadly lacking in humor.

Want to stay safe? Stay home.

[/cointent_lockedcontent]

We had quite a situation up on Robinson’s Mountain this week.[cointent_lockedcontent]

My father cut the grass last week, which I know is a difficult job. For many years, when I was growing up, that was my job.

As the old Erma Bombeck title correctly reports, the grass is always greener over the septic tank. But with our lawn, surrounded by acres of woods, the grass grows differently throughout our yard. So in places it was so thick you could hardly push a mower through it, while in other places, it was so thin you couldn’t be sure how far you had already cut.

Plus you had obstacles to deal with. Pine cones and rocks were common.

And there was this one spot where our telephone line runs. It stuck out of the ground, and when the lawnmower hit it, it sparked from metal touching metal. It never caught fire, but it kept Mrs. Robinson’s chubby son Ben awake as he mowed the lawn.

Either way, now my father is retired and says he needs to cut the grass so he will be able to get some exercise. I don’t mention that I obviously need the exercise just as badly. I just accept the relief of not having to cut the grass.

So my father was cutting the grass when he ran over something and the lawnmower stopped. I keep telling him that the proper way to stop the lawnmower is that lever on the handle, but he prefers just to run over something.

But this time he ran over the wires that go to our satellite television. Of course, when the blade hits those cables, our satellite goes out.

When I was young, there was no such thing as satellite television. We could get Channel 4 from Greenville, Channel 7 from Spartanburg and occasionally some glimmer of Channel 13 from Asheville. Channel 16 didn’t exist yet, and Channel 29 was educational (who wants to learn from home?). When Channel 21 came around years later, people started calling it “country cable.” A friend of mine’s mother actually sat up late one night to enjoy the fact she could get a signal 24 hours a day.

Other channels popped up over the years, but while I was away from home at college, my parents bought one of those small satellite dishes, and suddenly our television choices went from 3 to 200.

Eventually, the TV folks figured out how to rig it to where you couldn’t just pick up stations through the air anymore, so we had to buy boxes for even our small black-and-white televisions.

So after my father ran over the satellite wires with the lawnmower, we went from 200 channels to 0.

My father called the satellite people and reported the incident.

“They said it would be next Monday before they could have anybody come and look at the satellite,” he reported.

“What?” I answered. “Are they coming on the Mayflower?”

“They’ll probably use one of those vans,” my mother said.

So for almost a week, I was trapped in a home with no television.

But today is Monday and they’re supposed to be coming to fix it. I have a meeting to cover tonight, but I will sleep better knowing television will be back tomorrow.

[/cointent_lockedcontent]

Why doesn’t county talk?

Dear Editor,

There have been several articles about Pickens County building fire stations and turning the existing system “upside-down.”

[cointent_lockedcontent]Repeatedly, the articles have quoted Easley and Pickens leaders as saying they don’t know what’s going on or why. According to the articles, the buildings have been delayed, contracts revoked and it appears much equipment will need to be purchased as well as many new firemen hired.

Yet the county remains quiet. Who is paying for all of this and why? I filed a FOIA request asking if city tax money was being used and was told to look on the county website.

I believe it’s illegal to use city tax money to provide a service that the city already provides. Perhaps one of our legislators should get a legal opinion on that. Yet the county remains quiet.

The contract revocation appears mean-spirited and punitive. For what? The county got mad at the press (for reporting truthfully) and discussed hiring a public information officer. All they have to do is let the public know what they are doing and why.

This council continues to hurt Pickens County, and it needs to stop. There are at least a dozen unanswered and unaccounted-for actions by them, from killing a mental health grant ($250,000!) to slandering individuals to wasting huge sums of money firing people so they can continue to run things “like we used to.” Laughable if not so sad and harmful. And embarrassing.

Tom O’Hanlan

Liberty

GOP hurting the little guy

Dear Editor,

I have been listening to the GOP candidates for president, and they all seem to be saying the same things. Cut Social Security, get rid of Medicaid, cut Medicare, cut education, repeal Obamacare, etc. Everything that help the majority of the population seems to be on their agenda to do away with or cut.

How come I never hear any one of them say any of the following things?

“Let’s close tax loopholes that allow corporations and the rich to offshore money to evade taxes.”

“Let’s close loopholes that allow corporations and the rich to pay little or no taxes.”

“Let’s close loopholes that allow corporations to set up phony offshore headquarters to evade taxes.”

“Let’s stop paying corporate subsidies.”

“Let’s close the loophole that rewards companies that move American jobs offshore.”

“Let’s raise taxes on the rich.”

They are willing to hurt the little guy, but they sure refuse to make the rich or corporations pay their fair share.

Another thing I notice that affects this state — our wonderful governor and attorney general are joining the lawsuit against the new EPA emission regulations. Let’s see — South Carolina lost the immigration lawsuit, the voter ID lawsuit, the Obamacare lawsuit and the same-sex marriage lawsuit. Now we’re going to waste more money on another ALEC/Koch brothers lawsuit. We can’t fix our roads, fund education or decrease the backlog in the legal system, but we can waste more taxpayer money on another ALEC/Koch sponsored lawsuit. Wonder what the connection is between the governor and attorney general and the law firms they hire to represent South Carolina?

Larry Allen

Easley

A man of contradictions and platitudes

Dear Editor,

Dr. Ben Carson, who is running on the Republican ticket for president, spoke in Seneca on Monday.

Dr. Carson, who is African-American, told the story of his youth and how, as he grew, he distanced himself from his black and visionless peers and went on to become a doctor.

One problem that poor people have, Dr. Carson said, is that they make more money on welfare than they do working. “So why work?” he asked. Yet in the next breath, Dr. Carson refuted the notion of raising the minimum wage to a level that would get people out of poverty. To this contradiction in logic, he offers only platitudes.

The event was booked as a Latino outreach, but only one Latino attended. Perhaps the rest of the Latino population had read Dr. Carson’s recent statement that if he were president, he would use drones to kill all undocumented workers in the USA. The idea of being murdered by Dr. Carson as they sleep in their beds with their wives and children perhaps does not appeal to Latinos. Dr. Carson is a mild-mannered doctor who believes in mass murder. Hmmmmm, contradiction on steroids.

Dr. Carson is a black man, running as a Republican candidate, who does not see black skin when he looks in the mirror. He sees a man who has escaped black poverty and is no longer associated with “those folks.” He totes the Republican line and does not thank his cultural predecessors for getting him to where he is today. Instead, he mouths the words of the Republican white man, hoping that no one will notice the contradictions.

Marley Allgood

Seneca

Political bullying needs to have consequences

Dear Editor,

The recent S.C. GOP Executive Committee “hearing” on whether or not Pickens County’s GOP Convention was valid got me to thinking about all that money, time and energy wasted.

Think about all the stress GOP leader Phillip Bowers, his wife and their family have had to endure over the past five months, including the wild goose chase that someone put SLED on in order to harass Phillip by having him “investigated” over something a judge had already thrown out of court. Think back about the harassment of Ed Harris, his wife and their family when B.R. Skelton lost his race to Ed. Think about the fact that Skelton was a sore loser and pursued legal action against Bowers and Harris. The judge ruled fairly that there was no foul play and threw it out of court. But again … all that stress, wasted time, wasted money and wasted energy.

Costs associated with all these bullying debacles originated from elected leaders. Shouldn’t there be consequences for bullying coming out of the pocket of those legislators who do all this bullying? Dirty politics by elected leaders needs consequences.

Thank God common sense prevailed during the S.C. GOP committee hearing and truth came into light. This was an attempt by moderate GOP elected officials who are constantly reaching across the aisle to embrace the Democrats’ progressive ideology.

Our elected leaders are not following the S.C. GOP platform. Read it and you will see. If you don’t agree with the S.C. GOP platform, then find another party to join.

We have elected leaders who are trying to bully we the people. They hope we will give up on Christian conservative Constitutional ideology and become more “progressive.” They hate the grassroots “tea party” type. They call us names, harass and bully us. They try to discredit good, honest, hard-working people who want freedom, transparency, accountability, their taxes kept low, the Constitution and our S.C. GOP platform followed.

Neal Collins, David Hiott, Gary Clary and Larry Martin need to feel the consequence of bullying in their wallet. They need consequences for wasting money, time and energy. The best consequence would be for we the people to fire them in their next election cycle.

I’m on mission to make that happen. Join me.

Let’s show these power-hungry legislator bullies that we the people don’t like their bullying techniques.

Please make plans to attend the next Pickens County GOP meeting, scheduled for Sept. 17. Mark your calendar now. It is past time we the people get up and say no to progressive ideology or we will lose our democratic republic to progressive socialism.

Johnnelle Raines

Pickens

[/cointent_lockedcontent]

It was announced last week that Jimmy Carter has cancer. I don’t know what will happen or if it will cut short his life – though I’m not sure “cut short” applies to a man that is 90 years old.

The one thing I do know is that Carter will deal with his illness just as he has lived – with courage, determination, good humor and faith.

In an era of venal politics and personal vilification as practiced by too many on both the left and right, Jimmy Carter and his character are all the more unusual and compelling. Simply put, he is a good and decent man with an abiding Christian faith who in his life and career has simply sought to do the right thing for the right reason. That reason was he simply believed it was the right thing to do.

It may sound a bit old fashioned — and it’s certainly not a term you will hear from the Acela-corridor elites who have never really liked him – but Carter has simply led a virtuous life.

First a little context. Carter was an unknown one-term governor of Georgia when he announced for president in 1974. The reaction was best captured by the leading newspaper in his home state which ran a headline the day after his announcement that proclaimed, “Jimmy Who Is Running For What!?”

Carter ran in the immediate aftermath of Watergate, when the country was fed up with lying politicians in Washington — aka Richard Nixon and his crew. Carter famously said, ‘I’ll never tell a lie,’ and it’s a sad commentary that he was maligned by many of the nation’s pundits for saying so.

Carter’s campaign was politically very savvy. He ran as an outsider and reformer and was the first presidential candidate to focus on the Iowa Caucus, which he won largely because his innate decency and peanut farmer roots resonated with voters in rural Iowa. And when he then won the New Hampshire primary and a succession of other contests, the other more well known candidates, mostly Washington politicians, began to drop out of the race one by one.

He went on to defeat Gerald Ford, the first incumbent president to be defeated since Herbert Hoover lost in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression.

As president, Carter had his share of successes, such as the historic Israel–Egypt peace accord that he personally negotiated at Camp David and a bold new energy policy that began to wean the country off of foreign oil. He took some tough, unpopular stands that history has mostly vindicated, such as his strong advocacy of human rights, turning over the canal to Panama and the pardoning those who had evaded the Vietnam-era draft.

But in the end, Carter’s presidency was overshadowed by the taking of 52 American hostages by radicals in Iran shouting “Death to America — the great Satan.” And when a rescue effort ended in failure, it all seemed to be a metaphor for what Ronald Reagan called Carter’s failed presidency.

Upon leaving the White House, Carter created a new model of a post-presidency. He established the Carter Center to promote human rights, the spread of democracy and to tackle diseases in the developing world. The list of the Carter Center’s achievements is far too long to recount here but one notable achievement has been the virtual elimination of guinea worm disease, or river blindness, which has afflicted millions of people a year in Africa since time immemorial.

It was hard unglamorous work done away from the glare of TV cameras and celebrity activists. It was simply and quietly fighting a debilitating disease of near forgotten people – typical of the work of the Carter Center and the man himself. And, there has never been a scandal about where the Carter Center got its money nor how that money was spent.

Many have said that Carter was a better ex-president than he was a president; perhaps, but I’ll leave that to historians to decide. I do know that four U.S. presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize but only one, Carter in 2002, has received the prize for his post-presidency activities.

I have always been attracted to Carter as a fellow Southerner and as a politician who embodied so many positive traditional Southern values. First, the politics: in 1976, he won every state of the old Confederacy except Virginia, and he carried South Carolina with more than 56 percent of the vote, ranking S.C. fourth of the 50 states with the largest Democratic majority. No other Democratic presidential candidate has even carried South Carolina since.

Carter embodied the old values of faith, family and community. Anyone who makes even the most surface examination of Carter realizes that his Christian faith is the bedrock of who he is, how he defines himself and it provides the moral compass that guides his everyday life. Even today, whenever he is back in his beloved hometown of Plains, he teaches Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church.

Though some on the right seem to think they can claim a franchise on family values – Carter and his beloved wife Rosalynn have been the personification of real family values for the 70 years of their marriage. And community? Well, what can you say about someone who still lives nearly in sight of the graveyard where generations of his family are buried and can probably call by name every one of the 755 white and black souls who live in Plains?

Yes, Carter may lack the presidential success of Bill Clinton or the personal charisma of Barack Obama. But, at the end of the day, he is an honest and decent man who kept us out of foreign wars, cared for those in the world least able to care for themselves and told the truth. Few presidents of either party can claim to have done the same.

Yes, Jimmy Carter’s is a life of simple virtue.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and President of the S.C. New Democrats. He can be reached at phil@scnewdemocrats.org.

A death in the family

Dear Editor,

To all true Southerners, seeing our sacred banner come down was like a death in the family. Sen. Larry Martin, in his quest to vindicate himself on the issue of the Confederate Flag, used the names of two of our great Confederate heroes — Gen. Wade Hampton and Gen. Robert E. Lee.

He insinuated that both men would approve of what he did, but he did not give any quotes to prove it. I have never seen any quotes that these brave Southern men would sell out their heritage like our present-day politicians. Lee and Hampton did their duty and never apologized for it. Unlike Larry, I will give some quotes from our heroes.

General Hampton said, “If we were wrong in our contest, then the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was a grave mistake and the revolution to which it led to was a crime. If Washington was a Patriot, Lee cannot have been a rebel.”

That doesn’t sound very apologetic to me.

General Lee in 1870 said, and I quote, “If I had foreseen the use these people desired to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox; no Sir; not by me. Had I seen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.”

That doesn’t sound very apologetic to me.

Larry didn’t mention President Jefferson Davis, but I will, because he said something that applies directly to Sen. Martin.

Davis said, “Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologize for the defense we made of our own inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our prosperity was to endure, I would do it all over again.”

This is definitely not apologetic.

There is a Confederate soldier buried at Secona Baptist Church in Pickens, who went off to war to defend his home, family and country. His last request was that the Confederate soldiers be his pallbearers. He did his duty. His name is James Martin, and it’s a tragedy that his great-great-grandson Larry Martin failed to do his duty.

Sen. Martin represents special interests, and not the people of Pickens County. He has given up his Southern birthright on the altar of political correctness.

All we want is to be left alone to honor our ancestors, but that isn’t going to happen, is it, Larry? You voted to take the flag off the Capitol and move it to the monument. You said that was the end, and you lied. You then voted to take it off the monument.

What is the next thing on your list, Larry; that you and your politically correct Scalawags are going to take from us?

Jim Bay

Six Mile