Driving 95
Michael Bray
21 July, 2003
Annually, since 1990, I travel with my family from D.C. down to a place near Wilmington, North Carolina for a week at the beach. It is no fun to drive on interstate 95 in the summer. Traffic is heavy (and thus, dangerous), so this year we decided to decrease the lethal risk by departing to and fro in the very early morning hours when the traffic issue was negligible.
Wrong move. Departing on Saturday morning at 0400 on 12 July, the kids sound asleep, we glided down the road for 40 minutes before another car came from the opposite direction. It is two-way traffic, single lane for about an hour on 133 before we reach interstate 40 and then another couple hours to 95 where we got pulled over. The speed limit varies from 70 to 60 mph; in Virginia, where trooper Williams pulled us over, it was 65 and we were clocked at 83.
I am not a wreckless driver; I seldom drive alone; at least one of my eleven children is usually in the car. I have had only one accident in all my days. As referenced in my book, A Time to Kill, that accident occurred on a stormy night on an icy bridge over a river between Delaware and Maryland while I was purportedly engaged with plans to burn down an abortuary in Dover in 1984. No other accidents appear on my driving record of 35 years, and I was not faulted for sliding on the ice in the Dover incident.
Trooper Williams issued two tickets: one for “wreckless driving” (any speeding violation which exceeds 15 mph over the limit) and the other for having a minor (anyone under 16) without a seat belt. Trooper Williams looked behind my seat from his window to observe my 9-year-old, Mercy, sleeping behind me without a seat belt. She was next to Petra (eight months) in a car seat. There were seven other children, either sleeping on the floor or slumped in seats in varying postures throughout the 15-passenger, tinted glassed Club Wagon, whom Trooper Williams was unable to observe from my window. Those might have provided the basis for additional tickets had he been able to see them, he noted. At $25 per unbelted child, that might have been another $175. (Thank you, Lord, for that tinted glass.)
Now, patently, there are matters of choice that ought to be the exclusive province of parents: where to live, what school to put the children in, what to teach them, what clothes they wear, and what they eat. And there are things which no parent ought to be permitted to do to their children. Slaughtering them by abortion before they see the light of day, for example, ought not to be a choice; but whether to drive with belted children in dangerous traffic in the middle of the day or with unbelted children in less dangerous traffic ought to be left to their judgment.
Ah, that death-of-children subject. Abortion comes to mind even on vacation. And stopping it. (Nuisance thoughts sometimes.) When we were on this same trip, driving north on 95 in 1994, we were listening to the radio and pondering the John Brown-like deed which Paul Hill had performed on 29 July while we were basking on the beach. This time, as we road along ignorant of the news, Paul Hill’s death warrant had been signed on 9 July, again while we were basking on the beach.
Paul Hill had saved the lives of many children both by terminating the baby killer and by inspiring a dozen other abortionists to resign from murdering womb children.
Now, Trooper Williams appeared to me somehow to be a proud Virginian. Maybe it was in his voice when he proclaimed to me with a certain jingoist tone the “law in the state of Virginia” concerning the putting of seat belts around minors. And Virginians have been among the most persevering in the political arena to mitigate the tyranny of the federal government’s judicial edict re “abortion rights.” Virginians have much to crow about as Virginian-Americans. And Trooper Williams’s ticket notwithstanding, I exited 95 to take a ride on Stonewall Jackson Road for five miles to the pay respects to one of the greatest of all Americans at his “Shrine.” A small house on Thomas Chandler’s plantation was the only structure remaining. The single-level, four-room house, contained the bed in the room where Jackson died.
Jackson, like the noble Lee, was no more a slavery lover than the noblest northerner of the time. Righteous southerners were defenders of their land and their national freedom (all governments have their flaws; our federal government had a Constitution which provided for the institution of slavery as a right of the states). Slavery rights were lawful and practiced in the Union, North and South. The South did not give Americans slavery rights; the Union did. And that Constitutional right was reinforced by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott. The South simply defended its Constitutional right to slavery.
(Recall that the Civil War was not waged by the North to abolish slavery rights but to preserve a Union. Which was in turmoil over trade and economic disputes; indeed, slavery, as an economic matter, figured into the quandary. But the Emancipation was not issued until a few years after the War began and, even at that, it applied only to slaves in the South; it was as a tactical measure drawn more from the principles of Sun Tsu or Clausewitz than from the Bible. It is acknowledged, of course, that the great God whom many in America worshiped, did use the war to bring justice to the land. The Almighty does indeed use Christians to do good, despite themselves.)
The Union, the federal government, gave Americans slavery rights. And the Union, the federal government via Supreme Court edict, gave Americans abortion rights. The federal government can be woeful, indeed. (Better to let states rule themselves, make their mistakes and improvements, allowing for them learn from each other.) The Union was designed to permit each state to recognize God, even the True God of the Bible as God. Christianity (the law of God in the civil arena!) could be established by each state according to its own denominational pleasure. But the original design of the Union, states rights as explicated in the Ten Amendment, has been subverted since the Civil War. The consequent, gradual dis-establishment of Christianity from the civil order of each of the states has left us a Lawless American culture. Civilly, we have no God. Our laws are changed at the whim of an oligarchy of Supreme Court justices. And there is no justice.
In the meantime, there will always be those who see the evil of their times, regardless of who has the law of man on his side: Union or state. There have always been those who stand way above the fray, who offer themselves as a witness against an insurmountable tyrant. Who cry out for justice for the oppressed even as the masses go about their day as if nothing were wrong. Who throw themselves on the train tracks for no discernible good.
Yet, their bones will cry out. John Brown’s body lay a moulderin’ in the grave for two years before the winds of cleansing war blew. Paul Hill’s body is scheduled to be put into the grave in September. And God knows it. And I know that He damns this execution.
The Murder of God’s Prophet: in the Year of Our Lord 2003 Paul Hill’s Extremist Judges
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