Of all the women I’ve written about that have left their mark on politics or politicians, Joan of Arc is the most admirable. She made political and royal figures nervous and questioning their beliefs. The fifteenth century woman became a much talked about figure when she made public that she was hearing voices. To her, God had a message of insider military information, instructing her to drive the English out of France. She dressed for battle and showed up for war, and by her conviction (others called it madness) she rallied the troops and achieved a long sought victory of a key occupied city in just nine days. French King Charles VII, his own lineage rife with frequent bouts of insanity, dubbed her and her family nobility. A year later she was captured by the English, tried for heresy by the clergy of the Inquisition, and burned at the stake at age nineteen in 1431. Charles VII made no effort to free her. Five hundred years later she was canonized as a saint. Between 1450 and 1600, records indicate at least 30,000 were burned or executed as heretics or witches. The torture devises used during this period go beyond what the cruelest of masochistic minds could imagine, including water torture, racks, fingernail pullers, skull-and-limb crushing vices, burning feet machines, and metal chambers shaped like statues of the Virgin Mary lined with spikes in which the accused was enclosed to elicit a confession of heresy. The instruments were blessed prior to use; however in 2002, Pope John Paul II issued a general apology for this and for the “errors of his church for the last 2000 years.”

Mata Hari might not been politically involved, but she most assuredly was involved with politicians. At one time she had the world by its tail-until it turned around and bit her. How else to describe the Dutch officer’s wife who fled to Paris in 1904, changed her name from Margaretha Geertruida Zelle to Mata Hari, and pranced naked onstage while convincing the capitals of Europe that she was an exotic Indian dancer? “I never could dance well,” even she admitted. “People came to see me because I was the first who dare to show myself naked in public.” Just a few years later Mata Hari was despised as the most notorious spy of World War I. Her trouble may have been that she was too popular, so that when war broke out the French and English immediately became suspicious of her German acquaintances. Those “acquaintances” included lovers who had kept her clad in jewels and furs-offstage-throughout her career, and one of them happened to be the German chief of intelligence in Spain. She was followed constantly throughout Europe, and finally, in February 1917, she was arrested at her hotel in Paris and charged with espionage. There is much speculation as to whether Mata Hari really was engaged in passing secrets to the enemy. She had a gift for talking her way into things-it was the foundation of her career, after all-so it could be that she simply got carried away with her own imaginative tales. She claimed she actually meant to spy for the French, even though they hadn’t requested her assistance. Whatever the case, France, on the brink of defeat, was not much in the mood to give her the benefit of the doubt. In a prison outside of Paris, Mata Hari was put in a padded cell to prevent her from committing suicide. Her many appeals were denied, even by her own Dutch government, to which she wrote, “Jealousy-vengeance-there are so many things that crop up in the life of a woman like me, once people know that she finds herself in a difficult position.” On October 15, Mata Hari was awakened at 5 a.m. and informed that she would be shot that morning. “It’s unbelievable!” she said weakly, but otherwise remained composed. She put on a gray dress, a straw hat, and a white veil, then was driven to the Chateau de Vincennes, a military compound outside of Paris. It was just above freezing and foggy when she was led in front of a firing squad of twelve soldiers. She refused to be tied to the pole and refused also to be blindfolded. It is said that as the soldiers raised their rifles, Mata Hari smiled at them, even winked. After she collapsed an army surgeon walked over, checked her briefly, then fired a final shot-the coup de grace-into her head to make sure she was dead. Her body, which had been no secret to much of Europe, was taken to a city hospital in Paris, where it was dissected for medical research.

The focus of this month’s journal entries have been political in nature. Today’s entry is no exception. I can write about such things because we have freedom of speech. Our Founding Fathers were supreme champions of freedom of speech. But we should never forget that Alexander Hamilton was shot over something he said. Because in their infinite wisdom our Founding Fathers also gave us the second amendment, the right to bear arms, which is a reminder that while we can pretty much do and say whatever we want-you better watch it, buddy! I own two guns and am a big supporter of the second amendment as well. But I digress… No one knew the hazards of freedom of speech better than Victoria Woodhall, a leader in the woman’s suffrage movement in the early 1870s. Woodhall was the editor of her own newspaper and ran articles about how to perform abortions, the best way to operate a brothel, and how to talk to the dead. She was arrested in 1872 on federal obscenity charges. Woodhall is one of the women included in the book the Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Mid-west. She pushed, bent, and stretched the boundaries of free speech further than any other woman I’ve ever researched. If she were alive today she would be voicing her opinion about free speech as much as the law would allow. I believe she would have taken the side of those free-speechers who always argue the slippery-slope: if you muzzle free speech, before you know it, we’re living in 1984 and Big Brother is picking out our ties. Those seeking to control free speech, on the other hand, argue that if we allow Johnny Soulpatch to burn the flag, before you know it, we’re living in “Lord of the Flies” and Piggy is fighting for his life. But I have to believe there is a middle ground between government rule and mob rule. A place where only those who can make obscure references to literature, art and pop culture on their weekly cable show will be allowed to speak freely. A utopia… if you will. Throughout history many country have not agreed with our freedom of speech practice. Even in the late 1800s it seems America’s enemies saw our diversity of opinion regarding that right as evidence that we’re weak and divided, (that’s what Woodhall thought too and one of the items she pointed out when she ran for President of the United States) but it is the very presence of a vibrant marketplace of ideas that ensures our continued survival. That, and the high-tech weapons that can lock in on the glint off a scimitar from five thousand miles away. What annoys me about all this is why even the most repugnant ideas, like some of those Ms. Woodhall clung to, receive the same freedom of expression as more accepted ones? Perhaps it’s because the American system is less a “free marketplace” of ideas than it is a playground. And the best way to dispense with unpopular ideas is to let them roam free, so they can be kicked up and down the jungle gym by the cool ideas. I have no problem with people who respond to what they don’t agree with. I enjoy the drama of a toppled podium and the sound of microphone feedback as much as the next guy. What I do have a problem with are the people who fail to see the glaring hypocrisy of screaming the words “shut up” into a bullhorn. Take for example a young woman who was once my niece. She has the right to tell me that she “hates me, never wants to have anything else to do with me ever,” and demand that I stop “cyber stalking her.” The hypocrisy is that several days later she’s reviewing my entry on Linkedin. We’re not always going to like what someone has to say to us or put in print, but I, along with people like Victoria Woodhull would fight to the death their right to do so.

Whether it is Ford pardoning Nixon or Bush never catching Bin Laden, there is a consistent theme in the American character. We want the hero to get the girl, and the bad guy to get what’s coming to them. We are willing to deal with adversity along the way, but we have to believe that the good guy wins out in the end. I do not believe it is possible here. That truth haunts me. It keeps me up nights. My sleep is so near waking at times it’s hardly worth a name. The only thing that’s going to help right now is some hard hitting dialogue from a few good westerns, the kind of westerns where the bad guy NEVER wins. First, from the 1937 film The Plainsman. Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok to a gang of outlaws – “Take your hands off your guns-or there’ll be more dead men here than this town can afford to bury.” From the 1956 movie The Maverick Queen. Kit Banyon, the Maverick Queen (Barbara Stanwyck) to undercover Pinkerton cop Jeff Younger (Barry Sullivan), “The only way you leave the Wild Bunch is feet first.” From the 1955 western The Man from Laramie. “You’ve got no cause to shoot me!” “Shooting is too good for you.” Ranch foreman Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy) and Will Lockhart, “The Man from Laramie” (James Stewart). And finally, from the 1955 flick The Kentuckian. “You coming peaceable?” “I ain’t comin’ at all.” Sheriff (bit player) and frontiersman Eli Wakefield (Burt Lancaster). I guess I feel a little better.

This particular entry doesn’t have anything to do with the Old West. For me, however, the spirit of the tale is reminiscent of the heart of those who braved the rugged frontier and struggled to make it their own. It reminds me of those that fought at the Alamo, women who fought for the right to vote, and every lawman who battled to keep order in a rugged cattle town. This story, a famous anecdote about the Spartans’ bravery, is from the time of Philip of Macedon (382-336 B.C.), who forcibly unified most of Greece’s cities. Long ago the people of Greece were not united, as they are today. Instead there were several cities and states, each with its own leader. King Philip of Macedon, a land in the northern part of Greece, wanted to bring all of Greece together under his rule. So he raised a great army and made war upon the other states, until nearly all were forced to call him their king. Sparta, however, resisted. The Spartans lived in the southern part of Greece, a area called Laconia, and so they were sometimes called Lacons. They were noted for their simple habits and their bravery. They were also known as a people who used few words and chose them carefully: even today a short answer is often described as being “laconic.” Philip knew he must subdue the Spartans if all of Greece was to be his. So he brought his great army to the borders of Laconia, and sent a message to the Spartans. “If you do not submit at once,” he threatened them, “I will invade your country. And if I invade, I will pillage and burn everything you hold dear. If I march into Laconia, I will level your great city to the ground.” In a few days, Philip received an answer. When he opened the letter, he found only one word written there. That word was “IF.”

Abraham Lincoln wrote this letter to his stepbrother, John D. Johnston, who had written Lincoln that he was “broke” and “hard-pressed” on the family farm in Coles County, Illinois, and needed a loan. Lincoln’s offer of a matching grant, as we call it today, was a recognition that “this habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty,” and that getting into the habit of working was far more important to Johnston than getting a loan. “December 24, 1848. Dear Johnston, Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think is best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, “We can get along very well now,” but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work, in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and till you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. The habit of useless wasting time, is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in. You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, “tooth and nail,” for somebody will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home – prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home – in Cols County. Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months’ work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don’t pay the money back, you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can’t now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty dollars to you. Affectionately, Your Brother, A. Lincoln.”