Cherokee Chief John Ross once said, “Let the young men of this nation remember that idleness leads to poverty. Industry is honorable and leads to contentment.”
Then Wal-Mart takes over the textile mill ships business overseas and fate puts its face on the presence of what’s supposed to be a great day.
Fate…what is fate? Wikipedia calls fate an inevitable course of events. Meaning idleness isn’t so bad after all. Dictionary.com goes totally reality by explaining death is our fate.
In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln was forced to decide the fate of 300 Native Americans convicted of war crimes during the great Sioux Uprising. Was it fate that influenced Trader Andrew Myrick to shout, “If the Dakota Nation is hungry they could eat grass?”
The fate of such expressions might have been predicted but its destiny reached beyond a horizon fed by peace. Panic surged through the Minnesota’s forcing tens of thousands of settlers to relocate to deeper western regions. Lawyers and lawmaker’s demanded that Lincoln not think of freeing the 300 true American’s or there would be an uprising of people the law couldn’t protect.
Freshly delivered from the Civil War the nation was bloody and broke and on a personal level the Lincoln’s had just lost their daughter. If fate had its way of inevitably reaching its course of events…Mr. Lincoln would’ve sat back and rested. But because idleness leads to poverty it was quickly realized that all 300 Native American’s on trial held in their hands the right to appeal to the President.
Through endless hours and days of hands on reviewing the President took note of a single most important rule; none of the 300 were given proper representation by council. Trapped behind a language and culture barrier, nobody from the outside world helped the nation understand the proceedings, offer credible mitigating evidence or develop and practice their own testimony.
Standing in front of the U.S. Senate Lincoln sharply identified the truths of the crimes and how only 29 of the charged 300 had physically committed a war crime. The President declared there would be no unlawful violence. Because martial law had not been put into play it was wrong to convict the innocent.
Fate and or idleness would’ve been President Lincoln learning of the news in the Minnesota’s then turning to repair a country fresh from civil unrest. He elected to take fate and push it aside by moving forward with the idea of protecting all American’s. 29 of the 300 were convicted of murder and rape. 87% of those whose fate was death were saved.
Your goal everyday should be to push yourself beyond what research shows you should be doing. There is no typical in this newly redesigned America…the future of our success rests in the palms of those with a dream to be something other than convicted patrons of a banking and housing society that went missing.
The normal 9 to 5 everyday people of this country have been accused of bringing our four corners of the world to its knees when in reality the fate of this present place we stand should never be to stop. Convict the responsible and let the other 87% get back to living.
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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