DON’T BE CIVIL IN POLITICS !

Monday, May 18^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

DON’T BE CIVIL IN POLITICS!

 

 

        Here’s what we learned from the first U.S. Senate primary last week where incumbent Senator Bill Cassidy was defeated.  If you want to be successful, continually attack your opponent.  Make no effort to be at all positive.  And if a candidate is successful  in winning, make no effort to get along with the opposing party.

 

Former Vice President Joe Biden was roasted for talking about trying to find common ground with conservative southern senators when he served in the U.S. Senate. “At least there was some civility” Biden said about working with segregationists like former Mississippi Senator James Eastland. He should not have been so “civil” say a number of other democratic candidates.

 

I’ll tell you this. These out-of-staters have never spent time around the Louisiana legislature. When I was elected to the Louisiana State Senate back in 1972, I sat in the Senate chambers shrouded by older senators who had served in that body for a number of years. They included Harvey Peltier from Thibodaux, Jackson Davis from Shreveport, Jesse Knowles, who survived the Bataan Death March in World War II, and J.E. “Boysie” Jumonville from New Roads.  They all were quite conservative, more so than me.

 

Many of these senators had served through the segregation era and had opposed any legislation involving civil rights. When I took office, we often disagreed and I did my best to bring them around to my point of view.  But we were always civil and we often socialized and shared a meal when the legislative day was done.

 

Should I have scorned those who disagreed with me as Joe Biden is accused of not doing.  Of course not.  The whole focus of a democracy is to confect workable solutions where a consensus can come together.  Failing to confer with those you disagree with is, in my opinion, a dereliction of one’s oath of office.

 

I was affectionately referred to by these elder senators, as “the new kid” and “young Brown.” Boysie Jumonville, who sat right next to me, often called me son or boy.  I never took offense, nor did I think his term of “boy” had any racial connotations.  A far cry from the onslaught of criticism Biden is facing today.

 

Let me tell you how bad the racial tension could have become.  With much humor and gusto, Louisiana’s first black representative, Dutch Morial from New Orleans, relished telling of his first day at the state capitol in Baton Rouge as a new legislator.  Representatives have seat-mates, with their two desks sitting side by side.  As chance would have it, Dutch sat right next to Representative Jesse McLain, who represented an archconservative district in southeast Louisiana that had been a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity.  Now Dutch was from a Creole background and quite light skinned.

 

Dutch told me that when he took his seat, Jesse leaned over and whispered: “Where’s that N…..? (Yes, the N word.)  Dutch said he just smiled, looked around the room for a minute, then leaned over to Jesse, got right up in his face, and said: “You’re looking at him.” Then he burst out laughing.  A flustered McClain excused himself from the legislature for the rest of the day.

 

McClain came back the next day and apologized.  Dutch told me that they became friends, and that he worked on McClain for the next four years to make him more enlightened on several social issues.

 

Of course you have to reach out when you are in public office.  We will never agree on all matters, but there is a middle ground for many social and economic issues that both make sense and serve the public interest. For some current candidates running for federal office to argue otherwise is bad policy and bad governing. 

 

Peace and Justice

 

Jim Brown

 

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE POPE AND LOUISIANA!

Monday, May 11^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

THE POPE AND LOUISIANA!

 

Despite his conflict with President Trump, Pope Leo XIV is quite popular worldwide. There is talk of an American visit by the pontiff soon. He should come to Louisiana. More than half the population in South Louisiana is Catholic. There are over 500,000 Catholics in the greater New Orleans area alone. If the pope wanted to visit a state with a Catholic pulse, the Bayou State should be a “must stop.”

Catholic newspaper OSV Newsweekly puts New Orleans at the top of their list to visit a city that reflects Catholic “culture, history, physical landscape and spirituality.” The St. Louis Cathedral is the oldest continuing functioning Cathedral in the country, built in 1789. The first Catholic hospital was founded in the Crescent City, Hotel Dieu, operated by the Daughters of Charity. It would be hard to find a region more quintessentially Catholic since its founding than a large part of Louisiana.

Now I’m about as Catholic as one can get without actually making the conversion. I was married in the Church, and my three daughters were baptized by Bishop Charles Greco, the late and beloved Patriarch of the central and north Louisiana parishes. When my children were quite young, our family spent a number of winter weekends with Bishop Greco at a family hunting and fishing camp on Davis Island, in the middle of the Mississippi River, some 30 miles below Vicksburg.

On many a cold and rainy morning, a handful of us at the camp would rise before dawn for the Bishop to conduct a Sunday or holiday Mass. And even though I was not Catholic, he treated me as one of his own. The Bishop would patiently sit for hours and answer my barrage of questions about the history and the relevancy of the Catholic Church.

During the years I practiced law in Ferriday, Louisiana, Father August Thompson became a mentor and good friend. He urged me to actively become involved in a number of social issues within the community, and his influences eventually led me to run for public office and to being elected a Louisiana State Senator.

Father Chris Nalty, now pastoring in New Orleans, toured our family through the Vatican, even taking us down under St. Peter’s to the historic catacombs, and opened my eyes to the vast history of the Church and to the influence of Catholicism worldwide.  In my hometown of Baton Rouge, Fathers Miles Walsh and Cleo Milano are my sparring partners when I raise questions about the future direction of the Church. Father Cleo pastors at Lady of Mercy, which is close to my home. The Church has a marvelous adoration chapel that is open 24 hours a day.  It’s my resting place for meditation and solitude several times a week.

So why haven’t I become Catholic? I was named after the disciple James, the brother of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament book of James, the disciple conveys a Christian doctrine of simplicity. He offers two premises to be a convert. Believe in a higher being and do good works. That’s it. No involved ritual. No pomp and circumstance. Simply believing and helping others.

This new Pope seems to be in the direction of more simplification, and appears willing to face head on a number of controversies that have divided the Church. Catholics worldwide seem to want more openness, more discussion and better communication. As Billy Joel sang about the Church: “Virginia, they didn’t give you quite enough information.”

Pope Leo will have to confront the issue of a dwindling number of priests to minister to a flock of over one billion Catholics. What about priests being allowed to marry?  Women joining the priesthood, an increasing responsibility for nuns including the offering of the Sacraments, facing up to the sex abuse scandals, allowing for more evangelical services that are not as strong on ritual, all are issues that have a growing constituency that will require attention and reasonable understanding by the new Pope.

Yet, in spite of all the pressures to change and adapt, the Catholic Church should have a moral consistency, and not just modify doctrine and core beliefs based on current popular whim. Shouldn’t the Ten Commandments and the truths of the Sermon on the Mount be perpetual?

Pope Leo, although popular worldwide, has his work cut out to unify a church enmeshed in controversy. Thousands of Louisiana Catholics, who by and large desire a church grounded in moral stability, seem to be giving this Pope good will and the benefit of any doubt. As for this aging but quite interested possible convert, I’ll be watching on the sidelines.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.

 

LATEST EROSION OF FREEDOMS NOTHING NEW!

Monday, May 4th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

LATEST EROSION OF FREEDOMS NOTHING NEW!

Congress re-authorized the so-called Patriot Act last week. The law has created an invasive federal surveillance system that began with lies that undermined the liberty of millions of Americans.

Did this unconstitutional act begin the movement of the country  towards a “Brave New World?”  Hardly.  This type of deterioration of one’s constitutional rights has been going on for years.  The press turned its back to gross attacks on our individual freedoms , as the Patriot Act “legalized” a litany of personal and private invasions that our constitution was intended to prevent.  Both Democrats and Republicans have stood by and allowed the Patriot Act to sweep individual protections under the rug.

 In an interview with CNN, former FBI counter terrorism agent Tim Clemente said that the FBI could listen to phone conversations between anybody they wanted.  “Welcome to America,” he said. “All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

The Guardian’s columnist Glenn Greenwald took it a step further by concluding that all digital communications are recorded and stored by the government, saying: “This revelation, that every single telephone call made by and among Americans is recorded and stored is something which most people undoubtedly do not know, even if a small group of people who focus on surveillance issues believe it to be true.”

Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but this is a damning indictment of Big Brother at its worst, illegally invading the privacy of every American.  But is the daily illegal monitoring of the phone calls made by millions of Americans a startling revelation that has just been revealed?  Is recent Administration’s use of the IRS for political purposes unique?  Hardly. In his book, A Law Unto Itself: the IRS and Abuse of Power, author David Burnham describes how presidents going all the way back to Herbert Hoover have misused the Internal Revenue Service for personal vendettas.  Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to go after a former Senator in my state, Huey Long.  President John Kennedy authorized IRS investigations into the John Birch Society. And who can forget Richard Nixon’s “enemies list?”

So when your congressman or senator starts calling for special prosecutors to investigate the abuses by the Justice Department and the IRS, ask them why they did not stand up in defense of each American citizen and demand protection from invasion of those enumerated individual rights found in the Constitution?  We are all glad some members of congress are jumping to the defense of the press. But what about all of us little guys?

For good reason, there are calls of a tyrannical federal government that intimidates its citizens and puts a chill over freedom of speech.  But all this undermining of basic freedoms did not just begin recently.  Unfortunately, it is part of the darker side of American history.  When the Patriot Act was passed into law back in 2001, the intimidation and spying increased tenfold.  And these very members of congress, who are protesting so loudly now, stood by silently and did nothing.

If this Washington crowd wants to see the real threat to American democracy, they should just take a long, hard look into the mirror.  It was Pogo who said it best.  “We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.”

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.