Soldier dies while trying to vote during Civil War

[L Verge]

(11-17-2018 03:11 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(11-17-2018 12:54 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Roger, would you please post an image of the Great Seal of the United States? There is such an image on Wikipedia at "E pluribus unum."

I shall be glad to, David. Here it is:

I feel like we don't practice that Seal's claim much anymore, if we ever did. Last summer, I had to give a talk on diversity, ethnicity, and inclusion and how we in the museum field can apply those principles while still focusing on our particular era and subject. I started by asking folks to raise their hands if they were English, French, Italian, German, Scandanavian, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, etc.

As I did that, I held up a colored piece of paper with the corresponding ethnic category printed on it. As the hands went up, I tossed the paper into a glass salad bowl until there were approximately 12-15 pieces of paper in the bowl.

My next question was, "How many of you have heard the U,S. A. referred to as "the melting pot of the world"? Every hand went up, and I then said that we are no longer considered that. We have become the Salad Bowl of the world, where every diverse group is allowed its own traditions, values, and recognition. Some of you may have also heard the U.S. referred to as United Shades of America for much the same reason.

We then went into the contributions that various groups made to America as they immigrated here -- food, entertainment, science, sports, politics, etc. In the audience were representatives from about ten of our county's historic house museums (including support staff), and each of those sites were built in the 1700s - 1800s by folks of various ethnic backgrounds that we had mentioned. It was interesting to note that those in the audience who did not know the history of our sites had always considered them just "dead, rich white men's homes" served by enslaved laborers...

I guess what I'm trying to say here in reference to David asking for the Great Seal of the U.S. to be posted is that, as much as we would like to think that the U.S. stands as one voice from many different throats, it just isn't happening. We have always been a nation of many opinions based on our backgrounds and on the past political forces that have formed our experiences (whether here or in our forefathers' countries of origin).

We have high roads and low roads in our journey for good political representation of all, fair laws for all, equity for all. I just don't think that we will ever achieve Utopia in the politics and society of our nation -- especially with 300 million legal and illegal people going to the polls, and the mass media and social media giving them screwed-up guidance!

To me, the current system of voting, including the Electoral College, gets as close to achieving equality at the polls as we can hope for. This is just a personal observation from one who has been a registered Democrat all her life -- God bless the Electoral College in sparing us the grief of a Gore presidency and a female Clinton presidency. Now, if they just had the right to stop Nancy Pelosi from assuming the position of Speaker of the House yet again...