Mothers’ Day in the USA began when Julia Ward Howe instigated a post-civil war movement for peace.  It wasn’t about thanking mothers for bearing and rearing children and keeping house.  Mothers’ day originated as a political movement with the very sane and rationale objective of  keeping every mother’s child – mainly sons - alive by keeping them from the battlefield .

The original purpose of Mothers’ Day has been fouled up -   Mothers’ Day has become a day of flowers, breakfast in bed, and praise for fecundity.  Not that there is anything wrong with appreciating mothers and motherhood, but we have lost sight in this country of the insanity and horror of warfare, sending – with fervor and false premises -  our children into battle against other children as a  means of resolving disputes – while leaving less deadly solutions untested.

While we kill and are killed, mothers and fathers and every citizen is only fed sanitized and glorified news of our fighting.   With the best communications equipment which the world has ever had – including cameras, recording equipment, satellites, fiber, 500 TV channels, internet, etc etc,  -  in our isolated minds we  see, hear, taste, and feel nothing of what our 500 Billion annual defense budget dishes out.

We need to get back to that original USA Mothers’ Peace Day - every day -  and stop the painful pumping of  bleeding hearts…

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.