WHO AM I - I AM YOU
My name is Stephen Kirsch.
I will protect the one who is different, the one who creates, the one who works. I will stand with my brother.
Together we confront our struggles, ignorance. Together we confront the darkness. Where you go, I go. Together we will blaze a way.
I am an American citizen born in Baltimore. My heritage is German. My parents were Republican admirers of General Eisenhower. I was raised Lutheran.
My grandfather, Christian Kirsch, born in 1859, a Lutheran and laborer, left Germany alone in 1879 for New York City speaking German. He is buried near my home here in Jacksonville, Maryland. I pass his grave each day.
My mother taught me not to lie, not to steal, to cherish family, friends, strangers, to be a Christian. There are no strangers to the Christian.
I believe in God, family and my country. I believe in the teachings of my family. I believe in the right to participate in that which we built.
Early in life I was taught the story of the elephant.
To understand this enormous creature requires an effort to journey around it. Once done, the elephant is understood.
Life is no different. This I was taught by a public-school teacher.
My journey as a grandson of a man from Germany saw me loved among many of means but for reasons a mystery, I lived alone sitting, watching, listening to family living the good life from the hard work of the son, my father, of a man from Germany.
I believe in the American Deam.
No man is to have a master. Each is to be treated as an end, not as a means. Each is to be his own priest, his own master.
Pursuit of this Dream leads to legislation consistent with the laws giving rise to this Dream, that is laws universal, unchanging and binding on all equally.
We struggle for individuality, but a spirit, common to all, gives us the universal.
St. Paul wrote of the world, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit."
We share the same fears and dreams. It is these dreams upon we build drawing wisdom from the world making us brothers.
Freedom, free will, is deciding to be either a slave or a free man embracing the one law common to all.
MY JOURNEY
As a child in my father's restaurant were those working in the kitchen, the back room.
Difficult to understand why I, a child, called a man in the back room, Willie, while the man in the front room, I called, Mr. Ed.
I saw old people, people of disease, people dying, of poverty and happiness experiencing ignorance, greed, and ego centered lives.
I saw fathers and mothers with no sleep caring for their children working endless hours with the singular purpose to make a better world for their children.
I saw parents with love in their hearts speak in anger at school meetings making sense to them while people with noses turned upward ridiculed them.
I saw people committing acts of evil out of intentions of goodness.
I met a man given the name Roosevelt Marshall by his father, a black man killed in Korea, believing a child with such a regal name will have a good future.
I saw lawyers from the best schools, facing big dollars, the finest life has to offer, pass up this life to help the poor, immigrant, working man, and veteran.
I saw men behind the bars of the jail struggling to survive, not giving up their dreams.
I saw dreams of heritages trampled upon. People working hard, living honestly, ridiculed by the Washington DC elite seeing no further than the end of their upward noses falsely claiming to be better.
I experienced the pain of a son lifting a father of greatness from the blood of the floor upon he fell in drunken stupendous, of fathers and mothers holding their children dying from the gun, the drug, the dark side.
Saw a world consisting of opposites for everything existing has an opposite.
Happiness and sadness, bravery and cowardice, devotion and selfishness, knowledge and ignorance, good health and disease, wealth and poverty.
Saw unity and division. Saw hope beaten down by despair but not defeated.
Within these opposites is conflict and tension giving rise to a unity in differences meaning something is holding all together.
Existence cannot be without the differences, the conflict, the opposites.
I saw in life birth, growth, decay and death, an endless cycle. Things come into being, pass away, giving us a constant state of transition but predictable and rational indicating a designing mind giving us a world well governed by law.
Saw we live in a world of sense and reason, more opposites, with our attention focused on the senses, the illusions, ignoring reason. Reason found in the intellect when used takes us beyond the senses to the real.
I saw people rich and poor fearing death before their dreams were realized while struggling with a capacity common to each to be a bright star.
These things I saw in my journey around a world making the enormous look small.
CORRUPTION - GIVING US TWO AMERICAS
Saw a world lacking leadership, and a life appearing impersonal. Saw a world unsettled right down to its roots.
Saw a world of much law but little civility. Saw a world with little, if any, questioning.
Saw a world with little reverence to God with much reverence to man.
Saw a country placing confidence in a business class caring little of the worker, a business class pretending to care.
Saw little leadership, where the measure of man is profit fostering a shallow perspective.
Saw that much that happens in life is outside conscious choice.
Characteristic of our age is little discussion and concern for the poor, the weak, the orphan.
Saw government, local and national, becoming a single interest government. That is to attend to the few, the rich.
Saw a nation using words of sniping, a country where the poor, the worker has no organized voice. Saw a country once speaking of the other now talking about the me.
Emptiness and sterility silences the human will giving life little meaning, and a death not understood.
Saw a society blocking intellectual freedom, unbridled commercialism denying life. All is measured in money, lack of ideals. materialism, corruption, and cultural vulgarity.
Giving us a world where little is sacred meaning no glory.
Religion has become dull. The young live with no fire in their belly, no imagination with artistic and intellectual pursuit.
Saw many living a life whose destination is not a result of free will or choice, to a destination not of choice. People live and die not caring, breathing death not life.
Saw for our people, culture is deteriorating, being more interested in the spectacles of life.
Saw where the new temple, the new church is the business place, where pursuit of money is the new way to salvation, where material pursuit is no longer seen as a means to an end but is the end itself.
Saw all of this paves the way for the many to lose control of their lives with the few controlling their lives. The oligarch takes the place of the entrepreneur.
Saw a fear of the stranger, of the immigrant, the one living differently.
Saw education is not valued.
Saw a preoccupation with issues not related to reality.
In the 1920s the number one issue discussed was prohibition while people lived in poverty suffering a life in miserable working conditions. Today the focus is on cultural issues continuing the ignoring of the poor and weak among us.
Saw a history of poor policies designed for the few working to the death of the worker while the worker was told he is king.
Saw a country of ignorance. How can you argue with people who believe in space Jews?
The wealthy live on the labor of the worker.
I saw leaders of politics and industry containing little illuminating goodness.
I saw a world of classes, one dominating, one subdued. Saw government not as an instrument of the many but the few, the rich having the singular purpose to grow their wealth ending free enterprise purchasing government to support their way.
I saw government leaders become the same as their purchasers, men of greed, self-seeking, indulgent, corrupt.
I saw two cities come into being, the city of the rich and the city of the irrelevant, the city of the irrelevant divided by the city of the rich.
Giving us a ruling class corrupted and dedicated to greed, and a system doomed to failure and instability.
These things I saw in my journey. To these things, I say never more.
WHO AMI - I AM YOU