Father Ed wanted me to meet him the following day for lunch, for one of his blethers at the Holy Grounds Coffee Shop. The day was a pure delight, the air having been cleansed after the horrific storm with just a touch of Indian summer to it.
As I approached, I saw him standing straight as a rail with his signature high-and-tight Marine haircut—his hair still a medium gray—and wearing his long black cassock with clerical collar. He must be one of the last Catholic priests to wear a cassock, I thought. Father Ed was an anachronism, a dinosaur to most of the young monks and seminarians; however, they and the students respected him. After all, he had earned it.
“Okay, Joe, ready to chow down?” His military demeanor oozed through.
As we entered the coffee shop, he stopped and said something to one of the waitresses. She smiled politely, escorted us outside to the patio, and seated us at a small metal bistro set near the far wall, away from the building. Looking back, one could see the opaque stained glass windows of the coffee shop.
The wall was about three feet high and constructed with stones which were quarried from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The wall replicated the stone walls found along the Blue Ridge Parkway, especially at scenic overlooks. The vistas beyond the wall of the valley below, and the mountains in the distance were breathtaking. Like many overlooks, there was a precipitous drop-off immediately on the far side of the wall, which cascaded somewhere down into the valley. Looking straight down, one could only see a tangle of shrubs, brush, trees, and other undergrowth that created an elegant green canopy, but which hid dangerous and deadly consequences for the reckless or foolish individual.
We both ordered the soup de jour, which was New England clam chowder, and a hoagie. Mine was turkey and ham, and Father had the chicken salad with cranberries and cashews. We both selected lemonade to drink.
“We need to talk, Joe,” Father Ed confided. “Something is happening on campus and you’re smack in the middle of it.”
The waitress brought our drinks and served Father first.
“See that petite dark-haired young lady,” Father said, nodding in the waitress’s direction as she left. “Her name is Cindy, and she’s married to a wonderful young man named Fred, who is majoring in marine engineering. She is busting her hump trying to raise two kids while putting Fred through school. She waitresses here part-time and works as a hairstylist to boot.”
“Those two have some serious goals,” I acknowledged.
“Yes, but it’s getting tougher and tougher for the average American with some chutzpah to achieve the American dream. This nation is turning into a third-world country,” he complained, taking a sip of his lemonade. “One of every three Americans is on some entitlement program and fully 25 percent of Mexico’s population lives in the U.S. illegally, or otherwise, as Ann Coulter reported several years ago. The government is deliberately dumbing down the country through Common Core and by desperately trying to eliminate homeschooling.” Father looked out on the mountains reflecting on his own statement.
“I thought that they somehow voted that down?” I queried.
“Joe, they just made some minor alterations and changed the name—that’s all. Local communities, at one time controlled the education of this nation, and then the states took it over. Now the federal government is in control. Do you know why?”
“That’s easy; it’s a power and control thing. Hey, if I were a monarch, I probably would want the kids only to learn what I wanted taught.” Cindy arrived with our food.
“Remember what I told you Hitler said? ‘He who owns the kids owns the future.’ Our Founding Fathers never wanted this. Show me in the Constitution where the federal government is supposed to run the education system, as well as a zillion other things? Or have we forgotten about the Tenth Amendment?” asked Father as he took a healthy bite of his hoagie.
I looked at my measly turkey and ham, and then at his scrumptious chicken salad hoagie. Dang, I should have ordered the chicken salad, I thought to myself. I decided to start on the clam chowder.
Still munching on his chicken sandwich, Father continued, “Yeah, dumb them down, brainwash them the way you want them to think, and guess how they are going to vote?” Some of the chicken salad oozed out of the corner of his mouth. He quickly grabbed his napkin to dab at it.
Father, speaking through his napkin added, “And the few, who break through like Fred, still do not receive what we used to call a well-rounded liberal education in philosophy, theology, world history, economics, government, the arts, etcetera. A person like Fred will know a lot about one or two areas and essentially be ignorant in other fields.”
“I totally agree, Father. Instead, their heads will be filled with social justice and global warming ecology courses—the usual Marxist tripe,” I concurred as I forced myself to take a bite of my blah turkey and ham. “And you know what the usual liberal response to the federal government controlling education is?” I asked. “It’s under the general welfare clause, for government to take care of everything!” I put the sandwich down and went back to my soup.
“Yes, Joe, James Madison, within a few short years after the Constitution was ratified, needed to address this. Some representatives of the New England states wanted Congress to pass a bill to subsidize the cod fishermen, of course with monies from U.S. citizens.” The frustration was all over his face.
“Guess those fishermen had a bad season or something,” I exclaimed, trying to lighten up Father’s mood while still staring at my mundane sandwich. “Yeah, I believe we call it a ‘stimulus’ now.”
“What Madison, the father of our Constitution, stated, should be required memorization by every student, nay, every American. However, it’ll be a cold day in hell before the libs place Madison’s statement into a history textbook.”
Father had stopped eating his chicken salad hoagie, and I kept eyeing it. “How did Madison put it?” I asked. “Okay, it’s been a while since I last negotiated Madison’s quote, but here goes.”
“‘If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union; they may assume provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads; in short every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress… Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.’”
With that soliloquy, Father took a couple of long chugs of his lemonade.
“Wow! The only thing Madison left out was health care,” I exclaimed, trying to make a funny. “For all practical purposes, the entire Constitution has been shredded—for quite some time,” I observed.
Father Ed was on a roll. His chowder was getting cold, however.
“Madison was spot on, even his comment on religion. And look what has happened to the police in our country. The local constabulary is now under the dictates of the feds. It started several years back with Ferguson, Baltimore, and Philly; the DOJ, in effect, required the cops to back off. Now, virtually all your inner cities are burning, figuratively and literally, with wanton unrestrained crime, controlled by gangs like MS13, Crips, and Bloods.”
Father finally tasted his soup and then had a quizzical look, obviously wondering why it was cold.
“Government-backed-and-supported agitators were bused in,” I supplemented, “fueling already tense situations. Instead of letting the courts sort it out, the paid agitators wanted street justice by rampaging and looting.” I stopped momentarily to attempt another small bite of my pathetic meal. “How is looting and burning a store for its condoms and chips being supportive of some guy these hoodlums didn’t even personally know?”
Father had stopped eating altogether, having lost his appetite. “Now, the law-abiding citizens and businessmen, whose stores had been plundered and torched, are asking the same authority—the government -who fomented the problem, to solve the problem; which the government was more than happy to oblige.”
Still longing for some of Father’s half eaten chicken salad, I added, “And the John Warner Defense Act of 2006 quietly repealed the Posse Comitatus Act, which restrained the federal government from using military troops in our streets, a la Jade Helm ‘exercises,’ as domestic law enforcement has been thrown into the dust bin of history, while armed drones rule the skies. Father, that reminds me, do you recall a YouTube video I sent you several years ago titled ‘Prototype Quadrotor with Machine Gun’?”
“Joe, that unit was almost four feet in diameter. Since then, my sources tell me they are now about three and a half feet in diameter and can hold up to two hundred rounds of ammo. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Hunter-Killer flying terminators have been reality for some time now.”
My stomach was really talking to me by that point. “What was it that you wanted to tell me? Something that I’m in the middle of here at ICC?”
Father blinked in an absentminded way and shook his head. “Guess I got off on a tangent. I need to warn you that Professor Dietrich of the social justice department has got his sights lined up on you. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
“Social justice department?” I asked, looking at Father and then at his mostly untouched chicken salad hoagie. “Are you going to eat that?”