StocktonAfterClass
Ron Stockton was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 48 years. His specialty was non-western politics and political change. He taught classes on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Religion and Politics, the Politics of Revolution, Non-Western politics, and American politics. He also taught in the Honors Program, focusing upon foundational readings from the 18th and 19th centuries. He has an interest in religion and politics and in the role of religio-ethnic groups in the political system. The listener can anticipate talks on Arab-Americans, Jews, African-Americans, the Scots-Irish, and Evangelicals. He has lectured and written on American politics, public opinion, and voting behavior and on the role of religious organizations and ideologies in the political system. There will be occasional discussions of books and films that address serious issues. And he has lectured and published and even taught a class on gravestones, especially those of different ethnic and religious groups such as Muslims, African-Americans, Jews, and Native Americans. The goal of the podcast series is to provide analysis and commentary by a political scientist to explain and make accessible political, historical, and cultural developments in the United States and around the world, and to give the listener analytical tools to understand those developments. It is also to entertain the listener.
StocktonAfterClass
Lincoln was Far More Discouraged Than You have Ever Been. He Thought God had Turned on America and had Brought its Affliction as Punishment. Stop blaming someone else, God said. Look in the Mirror, God Said. The Second Inaugural Address.
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Ronald Stockton
I can hardly read this address without getting emotional. Lincoln believed God was stretching out America's affliction because we as a nation had allowed grievous injustice in our land. Our punishment was a protracted Civil War that took 700,000 lives.
Or to borrow from the great British song, The Streets of London
How can you tell me you're lonely
And that for you, the sun don't shine
Let me take you by the hand
And lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something
That'll change your mind.
This is a reposting. Because we may need to think of these things.