Tuesday, September 26, 2017
I am a child of the 1950s. My most formative years were
between the time I started school in 1951 and graduating high school in 1963.
Those were the years when we learned about the horrors of the holocaust, that
Communism as practiced in Russia had turned into a totalitarian dictatorship
and was not living up to their own ideals.
It’s also where I learned that, while I might not agree with
someone else they had an absolute right to their opinion. I learned that
yelling FIRE in a crowd was not only illegal; it was an abuse of my freedoms. I
learned that my right to swing my arm ended at someone else’s nose. I learned
that in addition to rights I had obligations.
One of those was to register for the draft and if called, to
serve in the military (I served 4 years in the US Army and am a Vietnam veteran) as part of my citizenship. I learned a larger concept of
my country.
Not the “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign
nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” of
Stephen Decatur but rather the concept of “My country right or wrong; if right,
to keep her right; and if wrong, to be set right.” attributed to Carl Schurz
The current public brawl over professional athletes not
standing in the “proper” pose during the pre-game playing of the national
anthem is a diversion from the issue. The true issue is what those individuals
are protesting.
The truth is race is still dividing America and Americans
long after we put laws in place that should have cured us of this disease. Yes,
I call it a disease because it’s the indefensible belief that one person is
innately better than another by virtue of their birth.
It is exactly like the ridiculous idea that men are somehow
innately better drivers than women. Right, I’m an excellent driver with over 56
years without an accident. Does anyone really think that being a man somehow
makes me a better driver than Danica Patrick? It’s so demonstrably wrong that
it should be obvious to any thinking person.
The website nationalpardon.org reports that the most common
percentage of Canadians with a criminal record is reported as 10%. While there
are a number of reasons to question that number, I’ll use it just to have some
basis for discussion. If ten percent of any group of people are criminals, then
90% percent of that group ARE NOT!
Ninety percent – the vast majority of the people you meet in
any group are just folks and should be treated as just folks. So the idea that
police need to be wary of every black person is just a thinly disguised
racism.
Going back to my childhood, my father taught me an important
lesson. “If you are a doctor nearly everyone is sick, if you are a policeman
nearly everyone is a criminal.” Why? Because that’s the part of the population
they deal with on a daily basis. He told me “Be careful that you don’t judge
anyone by the few negative examples, find out who this individual is before you make a decision about them.”
I suspect that most of us learned a similar lesson
somewhere, somehow. Most of us tried to live that ideal and thought that’s all
we could do to try and make the world a better place. Today’s events are
showing us that is not enough.
The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
It is long past time for me –if I chose to be a good man –
to do something. I don’t know what I, as one small man, can do but; I must do
something. Maybe all I can do is write things like this in the hope that you,
reading this, will also “do something” to help. Maybe all I can do is pay more
attention how I treat the people I meet on a daily basis. I just don’t know.
But this I do know I am being called to start today and I am
asking you to help.
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