INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

Do you know when you're income tax refund will arrive?  Inquiring minds want to know.  I pose that question because nobody will receive income tax refunds as long as President Trump continues the current government shut-down.

Don't make any plans.  The President has stated he'll keep the government closed for years if he doesn't get his way on border wall funding.  So much for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  President Trump has made it clear that, in his mind, the sole reason for the federal government is to do his bidding.  And if he doesn't get his way, he'll make sure the rest of us will suffer.  It would be apt to say that Trump is acting like a four-year old; but more of the four-year old children I know are much better behaved.

WHO AMONG US IS NOT AN IMMIGRANT?

According to the 11^th Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate ® Dictionary, a synonym is “one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses.”

That same dictionary defines immigrant as, “one that immigrates: such as (a) a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence, or (b) a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown.”

The following are synonyms of the word immigrant: newcomer, stranger, outsider, settler, nonnative, foreigner, alien. 

Who among us is not an immigrant?  Who has never been a newcomer or a stranger?  Who has never experienced a moment as an outsider, or a time of having to settle in new or unfamiliar surroundings?  The fact is, all of us have walked in those shoes; some more than others, and those who deny doing so are only fooling themselves. 

Life is full of immigrant moments – your first day of school; the first day at a new job; a first time walking into a new church; meeting other kids on the playground; passing strangers in the supermarket; interacting with unknown store clerks; being introduced to unfamiliar guests at a party, meeting newcomers at a club; and being the newest recruit on a sports team.  There are countless other examples, synonymous circumstances with those of an immigrant.

Before mistreating or ridiculing immigrants, ask yourself:  Is this how I want to be treated when I’m the newcomer, an outsider or a stranger? 

We have more in common with immigrants than many of us care to admit.  It’s time we act like it!

DEAL WITH IT!

A week or two after President Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, I confided in a friend that I was becoming more and more anxious every day over the prospect of having to live under an administration I viewed as not just morally corrupt, but downright evil.  It bothered me that America was being led by a man hell-bent on destroying everything good and noble about the country I love.  I shared my concern that Donald Trump was a wannabe dictator wrapped in sheep’s clothing, who would dupe a large segment of our population into pursuing the creation of a fascist society with “The Donald” as its deified ruler.  And then I confessed that the notion of having a sexual predator who boasted of his conquests leading the United States disturbed me greatly.

My friend responded, “Deal with it!”

There’s something about those three words that cuts my heart like a knife, and if there are three other words that can end a friendship faster, I haven’t found them yet.

“Deal with it” is a heartless retort under the best of circumstances, and it’s even crueler after the individual on the receiving end has acknowledged a vulnerability or difficulty being experienced in his or her life.

It does raise an interesting question though.  How is one to deal with the likes of Donald Trump?  Go mad?  Play dead?  Pretend he doesn’t exist, or delude one’s self into thinking the President has no power over ordinary lives?  None of those options sound healthy, or even effective for that matter.

A better answer is to find your voice.  Fight back!  Give witness to Trump’s lies and refuse to fall silent to the evil he peddles on a daily basis.  That’s how I will deal with it.  In the coming months you can count on me being heard, even if the number of my listeners can be counted on a few hands.   

A WIDESPREAD DISEASE CALLED CRUELTY

Several months ago prosecutors in Cocoa, Florida declined to press charges against a group of heartless young men who stood idly by a pond’s edge and watched a disabled man drown.  As the drowning man floundered in the water in a desperate attempt to reach safety, the young men videotaped his last terrifying moments on earth without offering assistance.  Instead, they laughed at the dying man and joked about his misfortune.  Charges were not filed in Florida because cruelty is not illegal in the Sunshine State.  It’s not illegal in most other places either, which is probably why so many people give so little thought to the cruelty their actions and policies wreak.

Cruelty is primarily born of ignorance, so it’s worth noting that according to Webster’s Dictionary, cruelty is defined as “a desire to cause others to suffer, the quality or state of being cruel, and actions that cause suffering.”  It is also worth noting that people aren’t born cruel.  Cruelty is a learned behavior, and children can learn to be cruel just as easily as they can learn to be kind.  That’s why it’s important for children to be taught early in life to recognize cruelty in all its forms and take steps to avoid it.

People say the world is a cruel place, as if that’s the natural state of our existence, but that viewpoint ignores the reality that life is largely what we make of it, and most if not all of the cruelty we experience is caused by human beings. 

Why does cruelty matter?  It matters because cruelty is a festering cancer that eats away at a person’s sense of compassion and their ability to empathize with fellow human beings.  Left unchecked, cruelty destroys a person’s humanity, and when it metastasizes beyond the individual and starts infecting large segments of society, that society’s health and well-being are gravely endangered.

Desiring others to suffer is the easiest form of cruelty to recognize, especially when the person or group or government that harbors that desire carries out a grandiose display of violence that reaches out and grabs our attention.  It would be a mistake, however, to think that cruelty is limited to the dictators and despots and terrorists of the world.  We all have our moments when we’d like to see others suffer, especially in situations where the target of our ire has wronged us, committed a horrible atrocity or harmed children.  Plus, it’s easy to confuse cruelty with punishment.  There’s a difference between the two.

Webster’s second definition of cruelty - the quality or state of being cruel – sounds like a no-brainer to recognize, but people often lose sight of their own cruelty when they believe actions  justify it.  To this point James William Fulbright, noted U.S. Senator and humanitarian once observed, “In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.”  Fulbright was right.  In World War II, the Nazis claimed national interests justified their murdering six million Jews.  Today, ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban routinely justify their cruel displays of murder and mayhem as acts in service to God.  Nor is America immune from cruelty.  In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, American agents routinely tortured prisoners of war and justified the cruelty with claims that it saved millions of lives.  Cruelty prevails because it’s easily rationalized. 

The third form of cruelty – actions that cause others to suffer – is the most prevalent, but also the most ignored.  That’s because people minimize their own role in causing others to suffer.  Rationalization helps, too.

Now that we know what cruelty is, it’s time to recognize the vast amount of cruelty that surrounds us and own up to the role we play in allowing cruelty to propagate.  It’s cruel to rip children from the arms of their parents and lock them in cages (12,800 as of this past August) for following a mom or dad across a line in the sand.  It’s cruel to mock the disabled for the crosses they bear in life.  It’s cruel to denigrate the sacrifices of soldiers, just as it is to devalue the humanity of one’s adversaries.  It’s cruel to take food from the mouths of the hungry.  It’s cruel to prevent the sick from access to medical care.  It’s cruel to deprive the elderly of their dignity in the waning years of their lives.  It’s cruel to sexually molest children, just as it is to tolerate or sweep it under the rug.  It’s cruel to leave a child suffocating in a car on a hot summer day with the windows closed, and it’s equally cruel to suffocate future generations with an atmosphere too heated and polluted to breathe.  It’s cruel to poison a person’s food or drink, and it’s just as cruel to do so on a global scale.

We see, hear, and read about cruelty on a daily basis, and maybe the constant bombardment has desensitized us to the pain and anguish cruelty creates, but being oblivious to cruelty is not an acceptable excuse when it comes to the suffering of fellow human beings.  Like it or not, we are our brother’s keeper.

A WALL FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP

It is not very often that President Trump’s wishes align with the wishes of liberal-minded people like me, but when they do it bears noting and taking time to consider the possibilities generated by that alignment.  President Trump wishes to live behind a 30-foot high wall and he wants people other than himself (preferably Mexican citizens) to pay for it.  Occasionally, the President has even suggested that the wall be topped with barbed wire (to prevent would-be rapists and criminals from crossing it) and again, his wishes align with the wishes of liberal-minded people like me.  That might seem a bit unusual, even foolhardy to suggest, but really, it’s not!  According to a survey of Americans conducted across the political spectrum in late 2016, almost sixty-six million Americans agreed with the need for President Trump to get a wall, and many were liberal Democrats like me who thought that America needed all the protection it could get.  Yeah, that’s YUGE!

There has been much discussion over the past two years regarding the kind of wall that would satisfy the President’s demands.  In fact, eight prototypes have already been erected near the Otay Mesa port of entry in San Diego, California, just across the border from Tijuana, Mexico.  If you Google “wall prototype images” you can take a look at them yourself.  If you ask me, those prototypes are aesthetically bland and fall short of the standards befitting a President like Trump.  First of all, none of them are gilded in gold, so that’s disappointing.  Next, the all-cement versions look like an open invitation to graffiti artists on both sides of the border, and the last thing we need are graffiti artists messing with the border’s natural beauty.  The vertical slat prototypes are similarly underwhelming.  They remind me of the cheap vertical blinds that beach-front condo owners regularly install.  Blinds like that have a habit of breaking whenever something bumps against them.  I worry that a similar kind of wall at the border would allow drug cartels to slip their products through the slats with ease, and emaciated children from Central America could slip through, too.  Both would provide bad optics for the President.

And it’s not like there aren’t better wall options available.  Officials in Florence, Colorado have already built a prototype wall that fits all the elements demanded by President Trump.  It’s big and it’s beautiful, and while it meets the height and protection requirements that Trump envisions, including barbed wire, its biggest selling point is that a person can actually look through the wall and gaze upon the majestic snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains.  It’s the kind of view folks kill for. 

Many of my liberal brethren were initially skeptical of Trump’s campaign promise that Mexicans would pay for a wall, especially when the Mexican President at the time said, “That ain’t happening!” (only in Spanish)  Even today, many liberals question why President Trump had to shut down the US government over a demand for a $5 billion dollar wall down-payment from Congress, when the money was supposed to come from Mexico.  Shouldn’t Trump be shutting down Mexico’s government instead?  I admit there’s a certain logic to that way of thinking, but many of my liberal brethren simply do not get the fact that President Trump doesn’t need logic or critical analysis to justify his decisions.  His gut suits him just fine!

FOX news has reported that a GoFundMe campaign for the President’s wall has already raised $17 million dollars, which might sound like a lot of money, but that’s just a drop-in-a-bucket given the $18 billion dollar price tag that President Trump’s wall carries.  That amount also pales in comparison to what we liberals would raise to make the President’s wish to live behind a wall come true, if only he would log off Twitter long enough to act presidential and recognize that he’s got more in common with Big Mack-eating liberals than he realizes. 

President Trump has also been critical of Democratic opposition in Congress to a wall being built, but I think the President is overlooking the forest for the trees.  Millions of liberal Democrats like me support a wall for Trump.  I have personally spoken to eleven of my like-minded peers and we are of the unanimous conviction that President Trump should get the wall he deserves.  In fact, all of us would volunteer to start digging the foundation if Congress would finally get off its butt and make it happen!  

IMPRISONED BY THE WALL

Tomorrow, we Americans will build a wall.  The day after tomorrow, we will send our soldiers to guard the wall.  The day after that, our soldiers guarding the wall will start shooting anyone who tries to cross the wall.  The day after that, we will celebrate the wall's efficacy, and the day after that, our President will proclaim that Americans are finally free to live as our forefathers intended us to live - safely behind a wall guarded by soldiers who shoot anyone trying to cross it.

Many years ago, people built a wall between east and west in a place called Berlin.  The next day, soldiers appeared to guard the wall.  The day after that, soldiers guarding the wall started shooting anyone who tried to cross it.  The day after that, the wall builders celebrated their wall's efficacy and their leaders announced that those living behind the wall were finally free to live safely as their forefathers intended.

Many years later, an American President named Reagan scolded a Russian President named Gorbachev and demanded, "Tear down that wall!"  And when the wall in Berlin was torn down, the people living behind the wall were filled with elation over their newfound freedom.  They celebrated with singing and dancing in the streets, and when the last bit of the wall's concrete crumbled, they wept for joy till dawn.

For centuries, men have built walls to keep people out, only to discover that walls function best to keep people inside them.  And those inside are not free, for they are trapped behind walls of their own creation and imprisoned in a fortress with precious little room to breathe.

Americans have spent centuries expanding their horizons, and when they reached their physical limits, they began to spread their message of liberty across the globe.  They even reached out to touch the stars, but that was yesterday.

Today, we Americans are a fearful lot; a people seeking the false promise of protection from a wall that will imprison us.  Hopefully, years from now, a Russian President will scold an American President and demand, "Tear down that wall!"  And when the wall is torn down, our children and our grandchildren living behind the wall will be filled with elation over their newfound freedom.  They will celebrate with singing and dancing in the streets, and when the last bit of the wall's concrete crumbles, they will weep for joy till dawn.

CHILDREN, GUNS AND LEADERS

Great leaders will sacrifice guns to save children.  Poor ones will sacrifice children to save guns.

THE STATE OF OUR DIS-UNION

My fellow Americans, it gives me no pleasure to acknowledge that the state of our union is cracked and divided, wounded and festering, dysfunctional and chaotic. We have trashed and discarded many of the principles that have made this Nation great – compassion, intellect, fairness and a recognition of individual dignity.  Instead, we have elected to engage in the narcissistic pursuit of money and power. We have abandoned the noble goals of pursuing life, liberty and happiness for everyone in favor of securing those bounties exclusively for ourselves. In the process, we have shredded the fabric of our society to the point where it is barely recognizable, because America is no longer united. You can “boo” if you like, but remember while doing so that you are booing the man or woman in the mirror.

Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Prize winning theologian, philosopher, physician and accomplished church organist, famously noted that “the purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

Unfortunately, here in America, a land blessed by God with abundant natural resources and a boundless sea of human ingenuity, we’ve corrupted life’s noble purpose of serving others to one dedicated solely to serving ourselves. It’s a sad state to be in, but one of our own making. The poor and outcast are no longer pitied for their suffering; they are despised, scorned, ridiculed and unfairly stamped with a mark of shame that labels them as lazy, ignorant leeches sucking at the public’s teat. Is it any wonder that against such withering attacks on human dignity, broken communities and broken families and broken individuals would sink to the lowest depths of human despair? Jesus would say, “Open your eyes to the suffering that surrounds you,” but for far too many Americans, such words are repugnant and revolting. This is why America has lost its soul.

And then, there are aliens…not the Martians or creatures from a distant galaxy, but the poor, tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, tempest tossed as they seek the sight of our Statue of Liberty’s golden door.  Those are the same aliens about which Exodus so eloquently commands, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Or what about Leviticus, which millions of Americans are so quick to quote – “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” I mention those passages because you cannot pick up a newspaper without reading that President Trump says that immigrants from our southern neighbors are all rapists and criminals, and other politicians are complaining that Syrian refugees, tens of thousands of which are women and children fleeing the ravages of war and starvation, represent a grave danger to the American way of life and should be turned away without mercy. This is why America has lost its heart.

And what happened to American intellect and our wealth of human knowledge? Sadly, it has fallen in value to the lowest common denominator known as ignorance. Americans champion ignorance. We really do. Take the term, “ivory tower.” It originated in the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon and was used to connote noble purity. Today, it's mostly used as a derogatory term describing individuals who have pursued higher education, suggesting they are foolish and disconnected from the realities of the world in which we live.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Diogenes once claimed, “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.”

“Hogwash,” we reply as a Nation, often espousing an even harsher sentiment whenever out tax dollars are asked to support the teaching of our neighbor’s children. And when we do reluctantly open our wallets, we insist on teaching a sanitized version of American history, a stilted and incomplete analysis of our human bodies, a censored rendering of American literature and a review of the principles of science and nature that sounds more like an Aesop’s fable than a  rigorous exercise of examination and questioning. This is why America has lost its intellectual advantage.

“What of fairness,” you ask? “It’s gone,” I reply. Fairness is being just.  It’s impartial.  It’s honorable and tolerable, even pleasing. Fairness is the opposite of discrimination and social exclusion. It is recognizing inequality in all its insidious forms and making a concerted effort to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, all the virtue that lies within the principle that Americans used to call fair play has been cast aside with all the pomp and circumstance of manure on a dung heap. America's justice system is knee-deep in racial and economic prejudice, but a majority of Americans are more concerned with maintaining the right of government clerks and bakery shop owners to discriminate against their patrons.

There was a time in America when fairness meant that people who worked hard were entitled to a living wage for the fruits of his or her labor, but tens of millions of Americans…let me repeat that, tens of millions of Americans are working a forty-hour week and aren’t being paid enough to raise their heads above the poverty line. And then when the working poor start clamoring for a raise in the minimum wage, the captains of industry and investment cry foul, along with the politicians they bankroll, and claim they cannot afford to pay the bill. Never mind that the top one percent of Americans control a staggering forty-three percent of America’s wealth. This is why America has lost its drive for equality.

I wish I could say that America stands as a beacon of truth, but I’ve seen enough television commercials and political ads to know that, paraphrasing the words of Jack Nicholson’s character in ‘A Few Good Men,’ Americans can’t handle the truth. That’s why we keep deluding ourselves with such notions as “reducing taxes on the rich creates jobs,” “poor people are lazy,” “people who go to church are the virtuous ones,” “money in politics doesn’t corrupt,” “intelligent design is good science,” “climate change is not our fault,” “more guns are the answer to violence” and “people who don’t think and act like we do have no value.” Yes, those are the notions of a seventh grade intellect, but hey, at least they’re not living in an ivory tower.

The recognition of individual dignity and human worth used to be considered a virtue, but in America it’s not any more. My beliefs trump your beliefs, or your beliefs trump mine, depending on who holds the reins of power at any given moment. Compromise has become a dirty word, not because we’re incapable of achieving it, but because inherent in the concept is a recognition that other people’s beliefs have value, too. That doesn’t work in today’s America where getting one’s own way is valued more than the collective aspirations of our entire society. This is why Americans are no longer united.

The First Amendment to our United States Constitution guarantees every individual the freedom to practice the religion of their choosing, or no religion for that matter, and religious tolerance has strengthened the fabric of our society over the course of our Nation’s two-hundred and forty year history. Sadly, that fabric is rapidly unraveling under political pressure from large groups of American Christians who display no tolerance for or appreciation of the religious beliefs of others. Religion is supposed to be uplifting and inspirational to help us connect with God, build a better world, and improve the lives of our neighbors in the process, but far too often in America religion is wielded like a battering ram, destroying the lives and limbs of all who stand in its way.

If I sound cynical, it’s because I am. Moral and theological purity were never meant to trump the necessity of being kind to one’s neighbor, but you’d never know it by tuning into Sunday morning radio or the self-identified righteous who foul our public discourse with the stench of their hypocrisy. There’s a reason Christ hung out with the poor and the ostracized, and it had little do with their need to be saved. It turned out that they were the genuine folk, the people who could look their neighbor in the eye, understand his or her predicament, display true compassion, and with little material wealth to share, reach out a helping hand. .

Many of you are wondering whether all is lost in America, and my answer is a resounding, “No!” There are millions of people in this Nation who are still guided by the hand of empathy and compassion. Millions more appreciate the intrinsic value of education beyond the number of dollars it adds to one’s wallet. Others understand the need for universal justice, the kind guided by fair play and available to all who seek its protection. There are many people in America dedicated to seeking truth, wherever it is found, and in whatever form it takes, and who are willing to speak that truth, no matter the opposition or consequences. And there are many who, in the deep recesses of their hearts, want the courage to hear the truth, if only we could find a way to empower them. They represent my hope.

I remember the idealism of my youth, and I’ve witnessed how years of human misery, and broken dreams, and the resulting distrust can chip away at the veneer of all that is good and possible in this Nation. I still nurse a candle of hope, however, because in the words of the English poet, Joseph Addison, “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

GOODNESS OVER GREATNESS

Winston Churchill once remarked that “good and great are seldom in the same man,” and given the popularity of the recent campaign slogan – Make America Great Again – it might be prudent to question whether that observation also applies to nations. After all, history has bestowed the title “great” on numerous countries and empires over the centuries, but that accolade was largely due to grand military conquests, longevity, vastness of land holdings and the number of subjects under thumb, not on the innate goodness of its people, its ideals or its deeds. That is why scrapping a national drive for greatness in favor of seeking simple goodness seems like a worthier cause. At the end of the day goodness, not greatness, is the better virtue.

On its surface the pursuit of greatness is an understandable endeavor. Who doesn’t want to be number one, with all the accolades that accompany such a lofty position? But here’s the thing - greatness without goodness is like a trophy collecting dust on a bookshelf. You can look at it and wax nostalgically over glory days long passed, but futures aren't built on trophies. That's because trophies dont last. Ask any archeologist what things withstand the test of time, and he or she will tell you it’s the simple things that last – molded stones, pots, pans, eating utensils and tools. Occasionally great artifacts are unearthed, but do your history and you will find that those too were created mostly by commoners seeking nothing more than having a bit of goodness in their lives. The great people got the credit. The good folks did the work.

Still, you can’t argue with the notion that seeking greatness offers a measure of satisfaction that seems to quench a person’s thirst for power and control over events and situations that are largely beyond their reach. It’s part of the human condition and of growing up. I remember with great fondness when my youngest daughter was three-years old and took on the mantle of a superhero, who along with her sidekick “Super Shadow” (her stuffed puppy) rescued many a victim in distress with the assistance of a bright red cape and a felt Mickey Mouse cap from Disneyland. She wore her cape and cap everywhere – to church, the grocery store and even daycare – and no amount of pleading or cajoling could convince her otherwise. My daughter is now a grown-up young woman.  Her childhood desires for superhuman status have given way to mature aspirations to do something meaningful with her life. She recognizes, and wisely so, that a cape and super powers are no longer necessary to leave a positive mark on the world. All it takes is the desire to do good and the willingness to put forth the effort. It would be nice if more Americans felt that way.

Maybe my horizons are not that broad, but as it turns out I don’t know a single great person in this world. What I do know are hundreds of good and decent folks with kindness and empathy in their hearts, who are not callously indifferent toward the suffering of others and are genuinely committed to bettering the lives of everyone they meet. These good and decent folks are not interested in greatness or the accolades that accompany being the person or nation on top. They are not a band of Silas Marner enthusiasts, collecting treasure as an empty measure of self-worth. Rather, they are people who make the conscious daily choice to open their hearts, and yes even their wallets, to the possibility of bettering the lives of all humanity. Good folks do not revel in the hollow notion of supremacy. They understand that the difference between good fortune and calamity is often the product of forces and circumstances beyond their control, and but for the grace of God go they.

Does goodness involve a measure of naiveté? I think it does. Why else would our Christian messiah caution that only those with the heart of a child would attain salvation? And why is it that only the meek and the mild shall inherit the earth? Isn’t there a special spot in Heaven reserved for a nation that can kick butt and destroy humanity three times over in the space of an hour? Doesn’t possessing a majority of all the wealth on earth count for something? A lot of people think so, but I’m not one of them.

There is no goodness in denying food to the hungry or access to medical care to the sick as the powers-that-be in Washington are preparing to do. Building walls and degrading women and killing enemies are not paths to goodness, despite what politicians might say, and if that’s what it takes to achieve national greatness, don’t expect my support. I’d rather be good than great.

TRUMP AND THE THIRD REICH

William Shirer’s thirteen hundred page historical masterpiece - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - is a must-read for any serious student of history or political science, but Shirer’s in-depth portrait of Adolf Hitler’s relationship with the German people can still leave a reader scratching his or her head with a gnawing question. How could such a large and intelligent populace fall victim to the spell of an utterly despicable sociopath and acquiesce to the murder of six million fellow human beings?

It’s a question worth considering as Americans today are faced with a Donald Trump candidacy that in many ways mimics Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to power. While it is true that Hitler did not begin his political career by publicly calling for the extermination of six million Jews, signs of his maniacal future were plain to see for anyone wise enough to put two and two together. He surrounded himself with violent thugs, angrily threatened political opponents using language steeped in violence, vilified the German press, demonized Jews and immigrants as the source of Germany’s economic distress and preached a gospel of nationalism called Aryan supremacy. He alone would make Germany powerful again, a boastful Hitler proclaimed to crowds of eager followers looking to satisfy their thirst for national domination. To his growing list of admirers, the nuts and bolts of Hitler’s plan no longer mattered, even when it eventually lead to the murder of six million Jews.

Speed the tape forward ninety years, where another sociopath takes to the stage, and a golden haired Donald Trump delivers a remarkably similar performance for a modern-day populace filled with disaffected people and cynical voters. He surrounds himself with angry followers, threatens political opponents using language steeped in violence, vilifies the American press, demonizes Muslim and immigrants as the source of America’s distress and preaches a gospel of nationalism that demands the rest of the world genuflect before American supremacy. He alone will make America great again, Trump proclaims, and promises to jail his political opponent and summarily kill all relatives of those who would threaten the American way of life. When a man like Trump boasts that because of his status and power he can sexually violate women with impunity and kill somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen, such talk cannot be dismissed as locker room bravado. Only the worst of the worst brag about their cruelty!

Many good and decent people honestly believe that Hitler’s brand of carnage could not happen here in the United States, but history paints a different picture of what is truly possible in this land of the free and home of the brave. Historians on the subject of slavery estimate that over 1.8 million Africans were killed in the slave trade with America. During the gold rush years from 1849 to 1852, tens of thousands of Native Indians in California were slaughtered for their land and the mineral rights below while the federal government and the State of California acquiesced to the genocide. During World War II, American citizens of Japanese descent were summarily rounded up and interred in prison camps for no crime other than their ethnicity. Between 1882 and 1968, three thousand four hundred and forty-six (3,446) blacks were lynched in this country, many for nothing more than the color of their skin. Clearly, Americans are not immune to the self-destructive forces of evil and social injustice.

That is why a man like Trump must never be handed the reins of power. It is also why many influential conservatives in this country have publicly acknowledged that a Trump presidency represents an existential threat to our republic and they cannot in good conscience support him. Those conservatives recognize, as do many liberals, that Donald Trump displays all the markings of a third-world dictator who would cause irreparable damage to the principles upon which this Nation was founded.

Let’s hope that ninety years from now our great-grandchildren are not scratching their heads wondering why we ignored the warnings about Donald Trump. There are certainly plenty out there.

STRAIGHT SHOOTING ABOUT GUNS

It’s almost impossible to have a level-headed conversation about guns in America these days, which is a shame because gun violence has spiraled out of control and all of us are paying a heavy price for it in some shape or fashion. If cooler heads prevailed, Americans could take steps to reduce gun violence while still protecting the rights guaranteed by our Second Amendment, but that would require people across our political spectrum to recognize the validity and concerns of those with opposing viewpoints. A good reality check wouldn’t hurt either. Unfortunately, there is a glaring absence of cooler heads in today’s political climate, so gun violence continues largely unabated and the only questions are when and where it will strike next.

The Second Amendment states as follows: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Consider the following question: “Does the Second Amendment guarantee prisoners the right to bear arms in jail?” That sounds like a silly question, unless the person answering is an inmate who has experienced first-hand the danger posed by life in America’s jails. For those of us who haven’t, the answer to the question is an unqualified “No.” Denying firearms to prisoners is the right thing to do for obvious reasons, but one has to admit that the Second Amendment doesn’t contain language limiting the rights of prisoners. That means one of two things - either prisoners should be allowed to arm themselves or the rest of us must recognize that the rights afforded by the Second Amendment can be forfeited or subject to reasonable limitations under certain circumstances. Folks can quibble about what circumstances should trigger the forfeiture of gun ownership rights or what regulations of gun ownership are constitutionally reasonable, but any rational discussion must begin with the recognition that there are limits to what the Second Amendment guarantees.

In June of 2008, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that was authored by the Court’s most conservative member, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch gun rights advocate. The Heller decision struck down several provisions of the District of Columbia’s firearm statute. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling, gun control proponents bemoaned what they perceived as a loss of any chance for the government to curb gun violence. Gun rights proponents loudly proclaimed that Heller outlawed any government attempt to regulate firearms. Both sides were wrong.

As Justice Scalia explained in Heller: “…the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right is not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not.”

So what are the Second Amendment’s limitations and what actions can a government of the people take to curb gun violence? Again, Justice Scalia’s words in Heller offer guidance: “…nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.” A Supreme Court decision issued just last month expanded the list of approved prohibitions to include misdemeanor convictions for crimes of domestic violence.

Scalia’s Heller opinion went on to note that prohibitions against carrying concealed weapons were permissible under the Second Amendment, as were statutes prohibiting the possession of sawed-off shotguns and other “dangerous and unusual” weapons, including “M-16 rifles and the like.” Scalia also wrote: “Nor, correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.”

After explaining the Court’s legal reasoning, Justice Scalia directed the District of Columbia to permit Mr. Heller to register his handgun [D.C. law requires registration of all firearms] and issue Heller a permit to carry it in his home. That’s an astonishing order coming from the late Justice’s gun rights pen, especially given the often made claim by gun rights advocates that registration of firearms is blatantly unconstitutional. Apparently, they and the conservative Justice Scalia were not of the same mind.

Scalia drove home this point when he closed the Heller decision by stating: “The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem [gun violence], including some measures regulating handguns.”

Now that the Supreme Court has offered a clearer view of what’s possible and what’s not under the Second Amendment, take a moment to consider proposals that seek to limit the right of individuals on terrorist watch lists and “no fly” lists to acquire firearms. If laws that prohibit felons, perpetrators of domestic violence and the mentally ill pass constitutional muster because of a legitimate governmental and societal interest in keeping firearms out of the hands of individuals deemed dangerous, then keeping firearms out of the hands of would-be terrorists and people who pose a danger to air travel would be permissible, too. It is imperative that citizens be provided with a mechanism for challenging their inclusion on such lists, but the legitimacy of barring people deemed dangerous from possessing firearms is a well-settled principle of Second Amendment jurisprudence. Politicians and gun advocates who claim otherwise are just plain wrong.

It is often claimed that the Second Amendment preserves the right to own firearms for the purpose of hunting, but the United States Supreme Court has never held that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to hunt. The reason for that is an often overlooked fact – wild game belongs to the states. In the absence of federal endangered species protection, a state has the right to control the preservation of its animals as it sees fit. If a state wishes to bar the hunting of its animals, it can do so without infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights. If a state wishes to regulate hunting, including the regulation of what weapons can be used by hunters it can do without violating any rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. It cannot be disputed that our Nation has a time-honored tradition of hunting, but a tradition does not rise to the level of a constitutionally protected right simply because of the passage of time. Those were Justice Scalia’s words, not mine.

There are many in this Nation who espouse the view that our Second Amendment’s right to bear arms includes the right to violently overthrow our own citizen-elected government. This viewpoint has never been condoned by the United States Supreme Court, with good reason. It is highly dangerous and runs afoul of our Founders desire to form a more perfect union by the establishment of a representative form of government. From a practical standpoint, if preserving the right to violently overthrow our duly-elected government were the Second Amendment’s purpose, who would determine when violent insurrection is legitimate? Would it be the right of each individual to decide for themselves when it is okay to gun-down a government official or voter with opposing political views? To support such an interpretation of the Second Amendment’s right invites anarchy, the very situation the founders of our Republic were striving to prevent.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was never intended to be used as a weapon by one segment of the population to terrorize, murder and subjugate another. It was enacted as a measure of self-defense, but also subject to reasonable limitations and regulations. All too often we forget that an individual’s right to self-defense is no greater than our collective right to self-defense. An unarmed individual’s right to walk the street in safety is no less important than an armed individual’s right to do so. If reasonable limitations and regulations on firearms can help insure that balance, the Second Amendment does not stand in its way.

BAH SOLOMON AND HIS PIGLETS

Bah Solomon is a self-employed pig farmer in the northwest province of Mbengwi in the African nation of Cameroon. He’s a short, scrawny fellow – a polar opposite to Mbah a Moute, a current NBA basketball player who hails from the same country, but Bah’s lack of height has not diminished his tenacity in working to improve his family’s lot or the zeal he exhibits in rooting for the Houston Rockets.

Jobs are scarce in Mbenwgi, and were more so back in 2009 when Bah was struggling to find ways to support his wife and five children. That’s when somebody told Bah about an organization known as (GHAPE) – Grounded and Holistic Approach to People’s Empowerment. (GHAPE) is a non-profit microlending organization whose mission it is to make credit accessible to the bottom fifty percent (50%) of those living below the poverty line in various countries around the globe. (GHAPE) frequently partners with (KIVA), a non-profit microlending organization I support, to provide loans to impoverished people that would otherwise have no access to credit. Bah is one of those people.

Bah has a history in the pig raising business and in 2009, people encouraged him to seek a loan from (GHAPE) to raise his own pigs to provide for his family. Since then, Bah has slowly built his pig-raising enterprise with the help of three loans arranged through (GHAPE), and on each occasion he repaid the obligation while continuing to provide for his family’s needs. In the process of doing so, Bah has also developed good relationships with his customers and is known for providing a quality product. Now, through the (GHAPE) partnership with (KIVA), Bah is seeking a fourth loan of $275 to purchase more piglets for his operation. If you’re a member of either the (GHAPE) or (KIVA) microlending groups, or are interesting in joining one, check out Bah Solomon’s microlending request.

THE EMPORER’S SUBJECTS ARE WEARING NO CLOTHES

Yes it’s maddening, but on a different level there is also something very comforting about watching high and mighty Republican Senators expose themselves as hypocrites of the highest order in a naked grab for power. It’s a powerful reminder that underneath it all, they’re no better than the rest of us, just a bit more connected and a lot more full of themselves.

Americans had yet to pay respect to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when a host of Republican United States Senators, including two presidential candidates (Cruz & Rubio) and Pennsylvania’s own Pat Toomey, publicly expressed their intent to abdicate their constitutional responsibility to advise our President and consent to appoint a duly qualified jurist to take Scalia’s place on the high court. Not only have those Senators besmirched Scalia’s legacy of unwavering support for contextually interpreting our Constitution, they’ve also demonstrated they are unfit for public office. Were he still among us, Justice Scalia would have brutally eviscerated the suggestion that U.S. Senators renounce their constitutional obligation and swiftly called for their resignation, regardless of political affiliation.

Throughout his tenure on the bench, Justice Scalia disdained public officials who refused to fully execute the duties of their office. In February 2002, speaking at a death penalty conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a week earlier at a similar symposium in Chicago, Justice Scalia defended his view that an originalist reading of the U.S. Constitution demanded that judges who refuse to perform their constitutional duty to impose the death penalty should resign their position immediately. Scalia reiterated that view on countless occasions during the years that followed and never retreated from that position in any Supreme Court opinion he authored.

Justice Scalia recognized that the potential for political gain or one’s personal beliefs do not justify or excuse the abdication of a constitutionally imposed responsibility, and he would never have approved of a wholesale betrayal of constitutional principles for political gain. To do so would justify the charge that Senate Republicans are unprincipled hypocrites of the highest order and that they have no appreciation or respect for the principles and obligations embodied in our Constitution.

The drafters of America’s Constitution wisely recognized that political winds ebb and flow, each according to its own merit, but only a constitution set in stone, with its attending rights and obligations could withstand the test of time. They also believed, and rightly so, that in order to insure the continuation of our republic as intended, those who pledge to uphold our constitutional form of government must fulfill their duty without exception or delay and without regard for their own personal or political beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln, America’s greatest Republican President once famously warned, “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

Take heed, Republicans. Truer words have never been spoken!

THE PASSING OF HARPER LEE

Harper Lee, the acclaimed author of To Kill a Mockingbird passed away today. The literary word has suffered the loss of a power voice of social consciousness, but her legacy will continue in the book that made her famous. I learned a great deal about justice and prejudice when I studied her book in both high school and college, and I’d like to think I’m a better person because of it.

MY TOP 100 FAVORITE MOVIES

Everybody has their own list of favorite movies. Here’s a list of my top 100:

A Beautiful Mind
A River Runs Through It
Amistead
Atonement
Becket
Begin Again
Ben Hur
Benjamin Buttons
Big
Black and White
Black Book
Bridge Over The River Kwai
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Captain Phillips
Casablanca
Castaway
Chariots of Fire
Chicken Run
Chocolat
Cold Mountain
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Dances With Wolves
Dead Poet Society
Doctor Zhivago
Elizabethtown
E.T.
Field of Dreams
Finding Forrester
Forrest Gump
Fried Green Tomatoes
Girl Interrupted
Glory
Gone With the Wind
Good Will Hunting
Goodfellas
Great Expectations
Hoosiers
Hugo
Ida
In the Land of Milk and Honey
Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones: Quest for the Holy Grail
Interstellar
Invictus
Les Miserables
Lilies of the Field
Lincoln
Love Affair
Mary Poppins
Michael Clayton
My Fair Lady
National Treasure
Oblivion
Oh God
On Golden Pond
Open Range
Out of Africa
Pappillon
Philadelphia
Pleasantville
Pride and Prejudice
Redemption
REDS
Saving Private Ryan
Secretariat
Seven Years a Slave
Shakespeare in Love
Shindler’s List
Shoes of the Fisherman
Simon Birch
The Adjustment Bureau
The Age of Adaline
The American
The American President
The Book of Eli
The Dancer Upstairs
The Debt
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Godfather
The Great Gatsby
The Green Mile
The Intern
The Natural
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The Shawshank Redemption
The Soloist
The Sound of Music
The Spitfire Grill
The Water Diviner
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
3:10 to Yuma
To Kill a Mockingbird
Unbroken
Unforgiven
Up
What Dreams May Come
Where the Heart Is
Winter’s Tale
Witness

SCALIA REMEMBERED

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has not been dead for twenty-four hours yet and already conservatives across this country are tripping over themselves to canonize the Catholic jurist a saint, but from my perspective as a Christian liberal with a sense of compassion for my fellow human beings, a man like Scalia warrants none of the hype or respect that are being afforded him. His family and friends are mourning the loss of a beloved member of their family, and they should have our sympathy and prayers, but the death of a man with a heart as cold as stone is something I can neither celebrate nor mourn, just as I took no delight nor grieved at the death of Osama bin Laden.

You’ll get no argument from me that Scalia was a brilliant man, but history is filled with brilliant men who used their intellectual powers to the detriment of mankind’s advancement, and Scalia ranks right up with the cruelest of them. Some men brutalize with weapons. Scalia did so with words, using the power of his position to send innocent prisoners to their death, to marginalize the oppressed, to disenfranchise minorities, to attempt to deny medical care to the sick, to place firearms in the hands of would-be killers and to thwart efforts to create a clean environment in which mankind could flourish.

Scalia’s legacy is not a legacy worth celebrating. What it truly merits is contempt and derision! He wasted his God-given intellect, not in the defense of freedom and human development, but in defense of an ideology that spawned slavery and continues to support greed and human oppression. That is not a legacy that a lowly carpenter from Nazareth would lift up in celebration. It’s the kind of legacy that Jesus would lament. It’s been said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. In Scalia’s case, the terrible waste is twice as bad, maybe more.

I’d say rest in peace, but he doesn’t deserve it!

FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY

Let's face it! We're never going to solve the Social Security insolvency problem until we get this whole global warming thing under control. As long as the arctic ice is receding, there won't be enough room to set our old folks adrift on an ice floe and watch them float away into oblivion.

Actually, America doesn't have a Social Security problem. What it has in a political will problem. By that I mean that there are not enough political leaders who are willing to place their own political careers on the line to do what is necessary to honor America's long-standing social contract that was established to take care of our retirees and disabled citizens. The Social Security ledger sheet could be placed in order for the next hundred years without raising the current social security tax rate in one simple step: require citizens to pay social security tax on all their earned income, without exception.

Right now, a person who works a 40 hour per week minimum wage job earns $15,080 per year. The Social Security tax is 6.2%, and on an income of $15, 080, the wage-earner pays $935.00 in Social Security tax. Wage earners making $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 and $60,000 per year pay the same 6.2% of their earned income (earned income = income from working) in Social Security Tax. So does every other wage earner making up to $113,700 per year in earned income.

This is where things get interesting…or unfair…depending on how you view the situation. Once a wage earner starts making more than $113,700 per year, the percentage of Social Security Tax that wage earner pays actually decreases, and the more a person is paid the lower the percentage a person pays. For example, the Social Security Tax rate on a person having earned income of one million dollars in a year is seven/tenths of one percent. In real numbers, a millionaire will pay $7,049 dollars per year in social security tax. When you compare the millionaire to the minimum wage worker, the millionaire makes 63 times more money, but only pays 7.5 times more Social Security tax. Where's the fairness in that system? Why should a guy working at a minimum wage job pay a higher social security tax rate than a guy earning a million dollar per year salary?

Social Security was created as a financial safety net, but for the wealthiest earners in our society, it's actually a financial windfall. Assume a millionaire pays $7,049 dollars into Social Security for forty (40) years. The millionaire will have paid $281,960 in social security tax over that time span. Now, assume that same individual collects social security for 20 years following their retirement. At the current top rate of $2,162 per month, the millionaire will have collected of total of $518,880 dollars. That's a tidy sum considering the millionaire already had forty million dollars in earned income. This is one place where Republicans never, ever talk about an across-the-board flat tax rate.

If one Social Security tax rate applied to all earned income, American would never have to worry about the insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. The baby boomer generation would come and go without bankrupting the security net that has protected seniors since the days of the Great Depression. This fix is not rocket science. It just takes something we're in short supply of lately: political will!

LIVING ONE’S POLITICAL VIEWS

Nothing stinks more than a political hypocrite.

If you’re opposed to abortions, don’t get one.

If you’re opposed to gay marriages, marry somebody of the opposite sex.

If you’re against paying taxes, don’t call the government when your home’s been burglarized, when your kitchen is on fire or expect government assistance when a hurricane has destroyed your home.

If you’re tired of paying for social programs that benefit the poor and needy, don’t apply for unemployment compensation when you lose your job and send back the social security checks when you retire.

If you want your kids to pray in school, remind them about the hundred times each day they can close their eyes and whisper a silent prayer.

If you’re against government regulations, regulate your own behavior so the government’s interference isn’t necessary.

If you want privacy for yourself, respect the privacy of others.

If you want to be treated with dignity, treat others with dignity.

If you’re tired of people making excuses for their faults, start by acknowledging your own.

If you value peace, stop killing others

OIL GOING BELLY-UP

Read today’s New York Times article “Stung by low oil prices, Companies face a Reckoning with Debt” and you’ll get a glimpse of what it’s like to be an oil company sitting on top of the world and then have its throne pulled from beneath it. The picture isn’t pretty, unless you’re one of those folks who’ve had to struggle at the pumps for the past two decades as fat-cat oil barons got rich and now you’re basking in affordable gasoline as the oil barons crawl their way toward bankruptcy. You’ll forgive me if I have no sympathy for the oil companies.

It’s kind of ironic that Sarah Palin’s “drill baby, drill” battle cry, which was so eagerly taken up by the proponents of big oil, has led the industry to ruinous overproduction. We liberals warned about the danger of following the advice of a woman who claimed to see Russia from her living room window, but I guess by golly that mamma grizzly magic was simply too much to resist.

And while I’m on a roll here, folks who were hoping to invest in the Keystone Pipeline should send a large thank-you note to President Obama for nixing the pipeline. The President’s action saved investors hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been piped down the drain as demand for oil dried up. Of course, Obama won’t get the credit he deserves from his critics, but history will prove he made the right decision.

ZIKA ON THE DOORSTEP

I wish a debate moderator would ask the Republican presidential candidates how their version of limited government would respond to the Zika virus crisis that is standing on our Nation’s front porch and knocking on the door. Will Trump be erecting a mile-high mosquito net across our southern border to prevent the virus carriers from crossing into U.S. airspace? Since the virus is also sexually transmitted, will Cruz block government payments to any doctor who prescribes contraceptives? Will Carson require virus carriers to register? Would Christie quarantine them? Would Rubio deport anyone who sleeps with them? Would Carly Fiorina scowl at them and hope they run away? Those are questions I’d like to see answered, because the current outbreak of the Zika virus, like last year’s brush with Ebola in Africa, is a quickly spreading epidemic that could easily turn into a pandemic. If or when that happens, the type of government response that is offered by the United States will depend heavily on the philosophy of the President in charge of it.

We saw what a limited government response was like when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the gulf coast in August of 2005. President Bush’s idea of limited government failed to mobilize in advance of the hurricane and failed to respond to initial calls for federal emergency assistance. We’re seeing what limited government advocates – our Republican Congress – are doing today by refusing federal funds for the needed repairs to the Flint, Michigan water system. Never mind that thousands of Flint residents were poisoned by state advocates of limited government who deemed saving money more important than providing safe drinking water for their citizens.

If the United States offers a limited government response to the coming Zika epidemic, thousands of newborn children will suffer life-threatening medical conditions and eventually die from them. It won’t be pretty, but then again in this day and age, limited government never is.