At First Glance: False Assumptions by Power and Authority

By Lorenzo D. Leonard

As a series of essays, At First Glance examines how a system of living that lacks a dedicated curriculum to educate individuals about their inherent credibility limits one's options for developing self-perception. Unaware of their own inner credibility, individuals tend to use outside experiences to define themselves. Without an appreci

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lorenzo D. Leonard
• Release date: Feb 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087951102

Lorenzo D. Leonard

Lorenzo D. Leonard is a writer and thought leader who is committed to resolving societal problems by addressing the root cause of the social symptoms of injustice, oppression, gender inequality, racism, classism, and ageism through his work. The deep insights and challenging rhetoric in Trust the Confession seek to deepen understanding, prompt reflection, and provide a clarion call for meaningful and lasting change. His previous works include The True Holy War (2009), Empires vs. Coalitions (2013), At First Glance (2021), Rules of Engagement (2021), and To the Issue of Credibility, Relevance, and Value: Educate to Character (2022).

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Copyright © 2021 Lorenzo D. Leonard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Dedication

I dedicate this body of work to the many years it has taken

to begin understanding how recognition and acceptance of

an individual’s inherent credibility can erase the legendary

foundation of moral impoverishment, thus making it easier

for humanity to live more comfortably with one another.

I also dedicate this body of work to

Cindi Pietrzyk and Richard Royse (Consummate Editors)

for skillfully and shrewdly making these years of

understanding comprehensible and digestible.

And a special thank you to

Sara Newlon, Heather Hannam, and Patricia J. Leonard

for their thoughtful and methodical

review of this compilation of essays.

The mind prefers ten things to come tomorrow,

than for one thing to be lost today.

A Proverb/Dirilis: Ertugrul

The face of love is dazzling, but those who are blind to truth cannot see it.

The smell of love is like a fine musk, but those without luck cannot smell it.

And the taste of love is like honey sherbet, but those without fortune cannot taste it.

Because love cannot be seen with the eyes, cannot be heard with careless ears,

cannot be tasted with an evil tongue. The language of love is the heart.

Love can be seen with the heart,

can be heard with the heart,

can be tasted with the heart.

A Proverb/Dirilis: Ertugrul

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1    The Transformed Emotion

Chapter 2    Two Historically Based Practices

Chapter 3    An Ethical Foundation

Chapter 4    The Will to Live vs The Will to Survive

Chapter 5    Authentic Credibility and Relevance

Chapter 6    Inherent Blueprint

Chapter 7    Impoverishment and the Will to Survive

Chapter 8    Redemption and the Will to Live

Epilogue

Preface

Reconciliation of Our Past

The future has several names.

For the weak, it is impossible;

for the fainthearted, it is unknown;

but for the valiant, it is ideal.

—Victor Hugo

Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight;

but he did see two; and that terrified him—

he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line.

And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory

—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Thomas Jefferson completed the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. He then submitted the document to John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, other committee members, and the Second Continental Congress for editing. Approximately eighty-six changes were made to the document. What is of great interest involving the initial document was how Jefferson placed himself into the middle of a significant paradox concerning basic human and civil rights. The first draft, which described this new nation ’s moral mission statement, included a 168-word statement denouncing slavery as an evil imposed upon the thirteen colonies by Britain’s King George. Jefferson’s rebuke included linking the king to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which Jefferson describes as a crime against humanity.

An extract of the denouncement read: He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. Jefferson went on to call the institution of slavery piratical warfare, execrable commerce and a collection of horrors.

While Jefferson took a convincing stance, intellectually speaking, with his words regarding the merits of abolishing slavery, he was unwilling to release his own personal slaves from a deplorable way of life. The belief system he was touting publicly, one he was proposing a whole nation take on, did not reflect how he was, in fact, living his own life.

This is not unlike more modern times in which throngs of people claim to believe that equality was a right and that black lives matter when, in fact, they do not, in their heart of hearts, believe that to be true. Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi (the leader of nonviolent protest) separated himself from Thomas Jefferson and contemporary activist groups with his conviction that only real change within the hearts and minds of people would diminish social injustices.

During the 1960s, a Black handshake, or referring to one another as brother or sister, were hollow gestures as are contemporary chalk drawings on sidewalks, murals painted in the streets, and protests that provide platitudes for stimuli. Such actions were not then and would not now ever be part of Dr. King’s agenda for social change. If societal conditions are to truly change, if social injustice is ever to be relocated to the rear-view mirror, every man, woman, and child must be taught to recognize their own personal blueprint of moral character consisting of attributes representing their credibility and relevance. Dr. King, unlike Thomas Jefferson and contemporary activist groups, never sacrificed his conviction for social justice in favor of political, superficial, and irrelevant pacifications.

By the time, the Second Continental Congress completed its work with the document, Thomas Jefferson’s anti-slavery statement had been omitted completely and was not included in the final version of The Declaration of Independence. On August 2, 1776, fifty-six members of Congress formally signed the document. This missed opportunity to enact anti-slavery measures would haunt America for centuries as racist ideology became embedded stereotypes held against Black people. Nationalism, power, and authority based on what an individual represents took precedence over patriotism and the positive values the country strived to embrace—like freedom, justice, and equality that were left by the wayside or enjoyed only by a select few.

Thomas Jefferson proved to be no different than many governmental, political, religious, municipal, financial, educational, and parental leaders who subscribe to the old adage, Do as I say, not as I do. Thomas Jefferson was no different than his fellow colonists who fought for their freedom from British oppression, but then engaged in the same business of buying and selling slaves as their oppressors. Outside of his intellectual understanding, Jefferson could not take a personal stand against slavery due to his fear of alienating a newly born nation that was delicate and unstable. In making this purely political decision, Jefferson gave into and fed the wave of nationalism that was beginning to pervade our country.

The oppressed became the oppressors when it was consciously decided that Southern plantations, a key engine of the colonial economy, needed free labor to produce tobacco, cotton and other cash crops for export back to Europe. Northern shipping merchants, who also played a role in that economy, remained dependent on the triangle trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas that included the traffic in enslaved Africans. (history.com/slavery-profitable-southern-economy)

Yohuru Williams, an American academic, author, activist, and notable scholar of the Civil Rights Movement further clarifies and answers the question: Why was the Declaration’s anti-slavery passage removed?

Between July 1st and July 3rd 1776 congressional delegates debated the document, during which time they excised Jefferson’s anti-slavery clause. The removal was mostly fueled by political and economic expediencies. While the 13 colonies were already deeply divided on the issue of slavery, both the South and the North had financial stakes in perpetuating it. Southern plantations, a key engine of the colonial economy, needed free labor to produce tobacco, cotton and other cash crops for export back to Europe. Northern shipping merchants, who also played a role in that economy, remained dependent on the triangle trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas that included the traffic in enslaved Africans.

Decades later, in his autobiography, Jefferson primarily blamed two Southern states for the clause’s removal, while acknowledging the North’s role as well. The statement: reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. That omission would create a legacy of exclusion for people of African descent that engendered centuries of struggle over basic human and civil rights.

As further evidence to Thomas Jefferson’s ambivalence, on February 11, 1788, he wrote to Jacques Pierre Brissot who was living in Paris, France, a letter of compliance. Brissot was the founder of the Abolitionist Society of the Friends of the Blacks, and he had, in previous correspondence, extended to Jefferson an invitation to join his organization. On an intellectual basis, Jefferson realized the inherent credibility each and every human being embodied and that every human is entitled to be recognized, this included the Black slave. However, he was unable to remove himself from wanting to hold together a nation that had slavery at the center of its existence in order to uphold his belief that each and every human being embodies an inherent credibility. Jefferson declined Brissot’s invitation because he felt the public exposure of belonging to such an organization in France could be cause for disturbance and embarrassment, both here and abroad. Jefferson stated in his letter to Brissot:

I am very sensible of the honor you propose to me of becoming a member of the society for the abolition of the slave trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object. But the influence and information of the friends to this proposition in France will be far above the need of my association.

I am here as a public servant; and those whom I serve having never yet been able to give their voice against this practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond the water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those motives therefore which govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured of my wishes for the success of your undertaking and the sentiments of esteem and respect with which I have the honor to be Sir your most obedient and humble servant.

It is important to recognize Jefferson’s duplicity. On one hand he admonishes King George for using slaves as pawns in a high-stakes war game with the colonies, which he considers morally inappropriate. He makes his feelings known to Brissot as he engages in his anti-slavery rhetoric and moralizing tone. On the other hand, Jefferson shows no sense of disquiet, guilt, nor introspection regarding the personal and professional benefits he experienced from owning hundreds of slaves himself. Jefferson represented what is a common phenomenon during contemporary