Public Policy

Fear Not: Democrats must be bolder in talking about faith

Posted on January 7, 2018 Written by Carl

For more than 40 years, Democrats have been whining about the power of the religious right. During that time, we’ve shrunk back and allowed Republicans to reduce the entire historic Christian faith to a couple of litmus tests. (As long as you’re against abortion and gay rights, you’re guaranteed the votes of a large majority of those who identify with fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches.) We haven’t even put up a fight.

That needs to end in 2018. In this election year, we have to remind voters that while the Bible says nothing about abortion and almost nothing about homosexuality, it says a great deal about feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers, and protecting those who are weak and poor. It warns against covetousness and adultery, right there in the Ten Commandments, but we’ve never made that part of the conversation.

A lot of people tell me it’s impossible to get the “Christian” vote back, but I’m not buying it. The “Christian” vote has never been as powerful as we imagined, and now it has begun to splinter as Millennials have asserted themselves. Conditions are ideal for a counter-offensive.

The religious right was born in 1979, but its influence has ebbed and flowed. We actually held the extremists at bay during the Clinton administration, because Bill Clinton, who grew up reading his Bible and knows it better than many ministers, had the courage to talk about faith. He took much of the wind from their sails.

They returned somewhat during the first George W. Bush administration, but they played a smaller role as the neoconservatives took the lead after the 9/11 attacks.

Then came the 2004 election, and attention shifted back to religion for many voters. Once again, Democrats lost ground not on the merits, but because we flinched in the face of God-talk. John Kerry was a devout Catholic who attended Mass regularly, but he ran scared because a Catholic bishop declared that politicians who support choice should not receive communion. This finally led to the ludicrous “wafer watch” in which reporters sought to get a photo of Kerry receiving communion.

Once you show fear, you’re always on the defensive, and that’s the best way I know to lose elections.

This doesn’t mean we should all convert to fundamentalism. I for one have no intention of doing such a thing. Rather, it means we must be bold in saying who we are. Boldness commands respect, whether we are Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists. No Democrat, from any religious background (or lack thereof), has to be afraid of these conversations.

Stepping up to this conversation allows us to remind voters of other issues that are important to fundamentalists but often forgotten. We get to remind people that democracy works both ways. It allows us to say, “When you force your religion on those of other faiths (or no faith), they will come looking for you when they achieve a majority. The way to protect fundamentalists is through the separation of church and state.”

It lets us point to the perverted logic of school prayer: Insist on a Christian prayer today and you must be willing to accept a secular meditation or Muslim prayer tomorrow.

In short, it knocks the props out from under vague assertions (such as those we heard from Roy Moore) about the United States being a Christian nation. It gives us a basis for turning back efforts to wedge religion back into schools through institutional prayer, religious pseudoscience and “abstinence only” sex education. It gives us a rational platform for keeping the Johnson Amendment, which keeps churches from endorsing candidates.

If Democrats do that, we’ll have much better results in the elections. And we’ll set the stage for more rational policy in Congress and the state legislatures.

Evangelicals were fine with abortion until the Right needed an issue

Posted on July 15, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter, APR

My article on how conservative Christians sold out to the far right got a lot of response, and it made me realize how few people remember that most evangelicals were fine with abortion until the late 1970s.

This is conveniently documented in historian Frances Fitzgerald’s outstanding new book, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. I covered these issues as religion editor of The Birmingham News in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so I have a personal memory of much of this background, but I’m leaning heavily on this history.

I’ve argued elsewhere that if you wish to pinpoint the tipping point at which the conservative churches and the secular far right joined forces, it was 1979. This was especially the case with abortion, which became the driving issue in evangelical churches. The “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” film series featuring Francis Schaeffer and physician Everett Koop came out that year, just in time to rally the troops for the election of Ronald Reagan.

That was also the year in which the Southern Baptist Convention, after years of tolerant leadership, took a sharp turn to the right with the election of a fundamentalist as president. The leaders made it clear that they intended to stack the seminary and college boards with fundamentalists who would purge the schools of “liberal” professors, defined broadly as those who did not believe the entire Bible was literally, historically and scientifically true.

Until then, even very conservative Southern Baptists had steered a moderate course on most issues. In 1971, the Convention called on Baptists to work to relax abortion laws to allow legal abortions “in the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental and physical health of the mother.” Even the very conservative W.A. Criswell, according to Fitzgerald, said after the Roe v. Wade decision that “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person.”

But in 1979, the film series flooded the Baptist churches with the idea that life begins at conception, and any abortion is murder. This was declared true even in cases of rape or incest. (In an interview in 1980, I pressed Dr. Koop on this point of rape and incest, and his response was clear: “It’s not the baby’s fault.” He would allow no exceptions.)

That teaching flooded evangelical churches in 1979 and 1980 and made the churches the tools of far right political thinkers Paul Weyrich and Ed Fuelner of the Heritage Foundation, which had been founded by the ultra-right Coors family. It has always struck me as funny that the Baptists were so quick to cozy up to the ideas of a think tank started with beer money.

What strikes me as odd about this is that up until the late 1970s, evangelicals — including those who later became pro-life firebrands — were pretty much OK with abortion. In 1967, a major symposium of 25 prominent evangelical physicians and theologians “showed consensus … that abortion, while possibly sinful, was necessary and permissible when it served to safeguard ‘greater values sanctioned by the scriptures,’ such as individual health, family welfare and the social good.” (Fitzgerald, p. 254)

Goldwater supported abortion rights, and even Ronald Reagan had signed a 1967 law in California allowing abortion in cases of danger to the mother’s health.

The extreme position that emerged in 1979 and afterward made for some horrendously absurd situations over the years that followed. In my church (which had shown the film series on Sunday mornings), the pastor regularly called out the name of a mother-to-be who was refusing to abort a baby that doctors had said would be badly deformed. She became a local hero within the church. As it turned out, the doctors were right, and the baby was severely handicapped.

I ran into the father of that child a few years later and asked about the situation. It turns out that when it was time to enroll the child in school, the church-operated Christian school told them they weren’t equipped for special needs, and they dumped the child on the public school system.

Forget the Independence Day myths. There’s more power in the truth.

Posted on July 2, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter, APR

We fly our flags this week and celebrate a divorce document. That’s it.

It’s not about the creation of a new nation. I’d argue that America had been a nation from the first time people whose religions weren’t welcome in Europe started settling in Jamestown and Plymouth, a century and a half before Thomas Jefferson put his quill to paper. And for thousands of years before that, because the Native Americans who lived here have a rightful claim on the title of Americans too.

It has nothing to do with the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers in establishing a bicameral Legislature. That didn’t come until 11 years later. It’s not about freedom of press or religion, or the right to own guns. The Bill of Rights didn’t happen for another 13 years.

It’s not about sending off soldiers to defend our rights, either. The Revolutionary War was already well under way. George Washington was already in charge of the Army, which had been fighting for a year.

It’s not even about freedom — at least not the way we use the word today. Despite Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent words that “All men are created equal,” half of our economy was built on the enslavement of black people who were captured or bought and brought here against their wills. Jefferson owned slaves. George Washington owned slaves. My ancestors owned slaves. I have copies of the sales documents showing the names of black humans, the dates on which they were bought and sold, and the price paid for them. (Have you ever held in your hand the bill of sale on another human your family owned? It can change how you look at the world.)

It’s not about establishing a government on religious principles. Ben Franklin, who drafted Jefferson to write our Declaration, was an atheist. Jefferson carried a prayer book but had no beliefs that resemble the fundamentalism that many claim now to be our birthright. Independence Day has little or nothing to do with religion.

So what happened on the July 4, 1776? We finished signing our divorce papers with England. We declared that the relationship was no longer good for us, that they had treated us badly, and that we were showing them the door. Read past the famous parts and you’ll find a laundry list of grievances very much like those you’ll read in any divorce. The King wouldn’t let us have any relationships with the rest of the world. He kept armies marching around, hovering and threatening us. He wouldn’t let us think for ourselves or work out issues among ourselves, telling us where we could live and where we could not. In short, we were in an abusive relationship with a domineering spouse.

To be sure, the Declaration contained fighting words, so the war that was already under way became even more fierce. It gave us many stories of inspiring heroism. My favorites, of course, involve two of my ancestors — an old woman in North Carolina whose husband and sons were off in the war. The old lady saw the British coming and burned her own house, declaring that she wouldn’t give them a damn thing to help in their war against her menfolk.

Or Jesse Carter, the first of my Carter ancestors to immigrate to the New World, who got caught up in the disastrous Siege of Charleston and likely either deserted or ended up on British slave ship. It’s OK, though, because he went back home, stole some land from the Cherokee and ended up rich. As hero stories go, that’s not much of one. But that’s the point. To make this country work, we have to be honest about who we are. We have to understand how we really got here so that we can make good decisions and find our way into a better future.

I’ve never had to go through a divorce myself, but I’ve seen plenty. They’re always messy, and nothing ever ends up the way you intended it to. One decision leads to another — some good, some bad. We go through good and bad times.

So here we are. Pretty messed up at the moment, from where I sit. It’s hard to imagine a time when things were screwier, but they were. Many times. We’ll get through it.

I remain an optimist. A few folks think I’m crazy, or not seeing the full picture. I heard the same thing when I didn’t join the fight against the godless secular humanists who were destroying our country behind the tyranny of a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher named Jimmy Carter. Some folks questioned my grasp on reality when I said we didn’t have to fear Iraq, a country with no functional navy or air force or (as it turned out) weapons of mass destruction. Somebody always seems to think I’m just not worked up enough about the dangers we face.

But when faced with whether we can rise to meet these crises and challenges, my answer is always the same: We always have. Along the way, we’ve done horrendous, terrible things. We’ve beaten slaves, denied people their votes, marched Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, incarcerated people because they were Japanese, and much more.

We go crazy. A lot. But we always come back to our senses. And that process starts with understanding what really happened at the beginning.

Preserving the beauty, while pulling up the shame by its roots

Posted on June 11, 2017 Written by Carl

By Lindsay Fernandes

Apparently, my mom’s grandad was a huge jerk.

This is what I’ve been told all my life. He used to habitually keep a giant Hershey bar atop the refrigerator, tantalizingly out of reach of his grandchildren, making sure they could see it while knowing he would never share.

He was also an extremely talented gardener with a gift for roses; a gift so well developed, in fact, that he was a co founder of the Birmingham Rose Show.

I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately because, as it turns out, I also have a gift for roses. It’s an interesting connection to me, because my mother, even though she shares my love of flowers, has never grown roses. She always said they reminded her of her grandfather’s rose garden, where where she could look but never ever touch, just like that Hershey bar.

This spring and summer, I’ve worked in my garden as a means of escape. The earth is comforting to me. When I work with my flowers, I’m hunkered down somehow – not listening to the television, not reading the latest meme – as a way to block out the atrocities of the daily news and find my center. The earth, the soil, is timeless to me. So I’ve taken some time to work on the things that root me, to find balance in the simple things, and retreat from those that had me frazzled.

And I’ve found myself thinking hard on that word, roots. I’m rooted to my jerk great grandfather. He is long gone, but his gift has emerged in me. The nastiness of his personality has faded into history, but his talent has lingered on. Because roots can be good or bad – misplaced roots can tear down foundations, disrupt the soil, and crowd out other growth. But well placed roots that are fed and cared for and maintained grow beautiful things. Things that are meant to be passed on.

I’m rooted to the city of Birmingham, the state of Alabama. I see a lot of nastiness in my city, and in my state, and in the generations that came before me. There is much in my city’s history in which I do not take pride. There is violence and hatred and racism. And yet there is good there as well. I see tenacity, stubbornness, and loyalty. There is pride and determination. Traits that could, if properly directed, change the world for the better.

The determination to do better, and be better, and mark change is drowning out the fearful desire to stay stagnant. My father and many people like him, vastly more talented than I am, are working tirelessly to change our state for the better. To rid us of the misplaced roots that have disrupted our foundation, and to instead foster new growth.

It’s time for new growth — for our city, our state, our nation. Let’s embrace the best characteristics in ourselves that our own unique histories have afforded us, and allow the sins and missteps of our past to fade into history where they belong.

Just like the jerk who couldn’t share a candy bar, but who grew the most beautiful rose in the city.

Beyond ‘Is there a march today?’: How protests lead to permanent change

Posted on May 29, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter

On January 21, I marched in the massive Women’s March, along with my wife, daughter and two granddaughters. It felt good, and made me feel that I was doing something important at a time when I felt powerless.

Since the election of Donald Trump, we’ve had a number of other marches, demonstrations, and organized town hall crowds. It’s been good to see the engagement, and these have set me to thinking about how to leverage the energies of our people as we get into the meat of the special and mid-term elections.

I’ve seen a lot of demonstrations and movements, going back to the early 1960s. Some brought about badly needed change, while others just divided us further, with no tangible long-term benefits. Over time, I’ve tried to understand why some succeed and others don’t. Here are some of the markers of successful public efforts.

They demand something tangible, from those who can deliver it. The major Civil Rights marches really shine in this regard. The Montgomery Bus Boycott had very specific demands that were practical and deliverable. They didn’t go straight for an end to segregation laws. They mainly demanded (1) the hiring of some black bus drivers, and (2) first-come, first-served seating. They combined the economic power of the boycott with direct action, filing suit in the U.S. District Court. Similarly, the Selma marches were a demand for a voting rights act, which they got in 1965. This combination was mirrored somewhat in the demonstrations against the two Muslim bans, which coincided with the lawsuits that got the orders stopped. This is a stark contrast to the Occupy Movement, which made a point of having no hierarchy. Nobody knew who was in charge, what they were demanding from whom, or who could meet their demands.

They are carefully organized. The bus boycott was made possible by a remarkable network of people with cars who shuttled workers to their jobs. Future marches in Selma and Birmingham were similarly organized in painstaking detail. Tasks were assigned, the workers were known, and everything moved toward a particular result. This pattern continued in subsequent Civil Rights marches as well as in some (but certainly not all) of the anti-Vietnam and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Such organization ideally includes careful training of demonstrators. Civil Rights demonstrators were well schooled in the history and effectiveness of nonviolence, with a great debt to the work of Mahatma Gandhi in India. Another critical element is building and maintaining records with contact information of demonstrators. This translates into a powerful army of voters, poll watchers and campaign workers.

They focus on massive, impossible-to-ignore events. The fatal flaw in the Occupy movement was its commitment to nonstop occupancy of public areas. The initial launch in September 2011 was inspiring and thrilling. But the determination to “occupy” areas indefinitely overlooked the reality of public fatigue and impatience with ill-defined demands. In Birmingham, the occupiers set up tents that became an eyesore for months, often with no more than one or two occupiers present. They ceased to be news. When they finally died out, there were few mourners. Recently, we’ve seen hastily organized protests and demands for town halls shrink and fall out of the news. This feeds the public “protest fatigue” and risks turning off potential supporters. We need to carefully weigh the tradeoffs between mobilization and perceived loss of momentum.

They translate into campaign workers and voters. The Civil Rights and Tea Party demonstrations gained power because they were paired with the heavy lifting of campaigning and getting out the vote. I worry about where all those January 21 marchers like me have gone, and I hope they’re working for candidates like Doug Jones and Danner Kline in upcoming elections. I hope they’re contributing money to compete against the Republican super pacs. I hope somebody got all their names and email addresses so that we can put them to work getting people to the polls. I hope some of them are even preparing to run for office themselves. There are a lot of people with special talents in our camp. I just hope we’re fitting them into the slots where they can be most effective. And I hope we’re not wearing out our people (and our welcome) by doing too many small events.

I realize some will take exception to my assessment. That’s fine; let’s talk about it. I am a fan of marches and demonstrations. I just want them to be as effective as we can make them.

1979: The year white evangelical Christians cut their deal with the devil

Posted on May 7, 2017 Written by Carl

It’s taken for granted these days that conservative Christians vote for Republicans — and generally for the most conservative Republicans on the ballot. But it wasn’t always the case. Many of the forces that brought this about happened in 1979, and I had a front-row seat.

Up until then, white conservative churches were mostly minding their own business. Black churches had a history of activism, giving birth to the Civil Rights Movement, but they didn’t seem to be doing much in the 1970s.

White churches were a different story. Big changes were happening along several different rails, and 1979 was the year they converged.

You could see hints of it in the 1976 campaign in which Jimmy Carter edged out Gerald Ford. Carter, a prominent Southern Baptist Bible teacher, received tepid support at best from southern Christians, who were already aligning more closely with the Republican Party. Carter’s running mate, Walter Mondale, was being attacked because his older brother had been a signer of the Humanist Manifesto. The term “secular humanist” was applied to Walter Mondale in what served as a hint of things to come.

They came in 1979.

That’s when Christian churches nationwide started showing the 10-part film series, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race,” featuring Presbyterian minister Francis Schaeffer and physician C. Everett Koop, who later became Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General. The series weaponized the Roe v. Wade decision and turned the guns on moderate Republicans like John Buchanan, a Southern Baptist minister and longtime Congressman representing Alabama’s Sixth District.

The film series drew a straight line from legal abortion to Hitler’s holocaust. In short, abortion led to Hitler, and that led to the need for a right-wing insurance executive named Albert Lee Smith to replace Buchanan. (It’s best if you don’t try to follow the logic too closely.)

Smith had challenged Buchanan in 1978, but the movement wasn’t ripe yet. Two years later, he ran again and won, with the backing of a beefier network led by Shades Mountain Independent Church pastor Dick Vigneulle, Briarwood Presbyterian Church founder Frank Barker, and others. It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the film series on the 1980 race.

But something even bigger was in the works: The entry of televangelist Jerry Falwell, who up until then had stayed on the sidelines of the political game. In those days, the beginnings of the “Religious Right” were being driven by the Heritage Foundation, which had been founded in 1973 and was coming into its own. Heritage had been providing studies supporting ideas like supply-side economics and a stronger national defense, but it needed stronger ties to the churches. Founder Paul Weyrich had been working Falwell for three years, and in 1979, he finally convinced him to form Moral Majority.

The Republicans and conservative Christians were pretty much married at that point. During these years, I interviewed Falwell three times (all three interviews set up by Vigneulle). Over time, the revolution in the Southern Baptist Convention took hold, and gradually, the seminaries were filled with professors who rejected much biblical scholarship. The previously non-creedal denomination became increasingly doctrinaire, with many gradually adopting a 1963 statement called the Baptist Faith and Message, which in any other church would pass as a creed. At the same time, many of the churches began taking sides politically — generally on the right. The Southern Baptists became pure enough for Falwell to join, and tainted enough for Jimmy Carter to exit.

Falwell is deceased, but his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., signed on as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump, who is set to deliver Liberty University’s commencement address later this month.

Why nobody who preaches fear will ever get my vote

Posted on May 6, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter

The one-gallon glass bottles of water were lined up across the wall of our basement, below a small window that looked out at ground level. They had once held Clorox and were covered in dust. My parents had placed them there so that we would have something to drink if the nuclear missiles from Russia or Cuba hit.

There may have been some cans of food, but I don’t remember them. My child’s mind (I was only seven or eight) raced with questions nobody wanted to answer. Why don’t we just go to the school? It was literally next door, less than 150 yards away, and it had a fallout shelter.

We knew what fallout was, vaguely. After the bombs hit, there would be dust and radiation that would make us sick. We would break out and our skin would slide off our arms, and we would soon die.

My friends told me they, too, had bottles of water stored in their basements. At school, we would have “duck-and-cover” drills when a siren went off and we walked single file to the first floor and put our hands behind our heads. I could see windows and doors from where I was ducked and covered, and I tried to imagine how the thin glass would keep out the radiation, and exactly how my little arms would protect me from the bombs. There was a big crack in the doorway. Wouldn’t the radiation seep in there?

A 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Ala., is attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963. On the afternoon of May 4, 1963, during a meeting at the White House with members of a political group, President Kennedy discussed this photo, which had appeared on the front page of that day’s New York Times. (AP Photo/Bill Hudson)

Not far away, there were other schools where kids were doing exactly the same thing, but one thing was different. They and their teachers were black. It was illegal for them to attend Minnie Holman Elementary, or Comer, or Gibson, or any other “white” school. Red lines on maps dictated where they could live. Presumably, they had their own dusty Clorox bottles of water stored away.

We rarely saw each other, unless it was downtown or on a city bus. My father routed the buses, primarily on an east-west trajectory, up and down First Avenue North and other roads that ran the length of the city. Every bus had a clear white line, and if you were black, you had to sit behind that line. If you were white, you stayed in front of it not only because of the law, but because heaven only knew what horrible things went on in the back of the bus. We imagined constant knifings and fights, and felt certain we might be killed if we went back there.

Because of his role as the bus scheduler, Dad got regular phone calls from the infamous commissioner, Bull Connor, who obsessed on keeping black and white from ever being in the same place at the same time.

Not that I ever saw any of that. That long seat in the back looked to me like a fun place to be. But no matter. Mother kept my sisters and me safely in the front. When we went shopping downtown, there were “White” and “Colored” signs everywhere — especially on water fountains, restrooms and doors. In theaters, blacks had to enter by their own doors and sit in their own sections, usually in the very back of the room. In restaurants — at least the ones where we ate — they weren’t allowed at all.

Whether black or white, we lived in fear. At home, it was fear of the Russians. In shops, and on buses and sidewalks, it was fear of each other, and a great deal of work went into keeping that fear stoked. Somewhere in Woodlawn, mere blocks from my home, was the local KKK chapter, to which my grandfather belonged. Nobody ever admitted James T. Harwell had robes in the closet, but it finally came out when his son (my uncle) Jack pulled them down one day while playing in the home. We certainly never heard what went on in those meetings, but apparently it wasn’t extreme enough for some members, who splintered off join others and form the Cahaba Boys, where the plans were hatched to bomb Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the deaths of four little girls.

I’ve been haunted for years by the question of whether my grandfather knew the bombers. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Over the years, some of the lines keeping black and white separate began to fade. It was 1969 before I had a handful of black classmates. The world didn’t end.

In his final hours of life at East End Memorial Hospital, my grandfather became delusional, grabbed a pen from an orderly and ran up and down the halls stabbing black employees in the backside with it. Whether it was fear, hate or some mix of the two, nobody will ever know. They had to sedate him and strap him to his bed.

While all this was happening, I was worshipping each week in an all-white church that posted guards to keep black people from worshipping with us — or, as my dad preferred to call it, making trouble.

Fear kept them out. Fear kept us in and sent our wealthier friends to the all-white southern suburbs of Mountain Brook, Homewood and Vestavia.

For years, starting in the late 1980s, I lived in Hoover next door to a career policeman and FBI agent, who happened to be black. We talked about the frequency of police shootings of black men. He blamed much of it on fear. A scared black man makes a sudden move interpreted by a scared cop as an effort to reach for a gun. Boom.

I think in many cases, the bullet is just the agent of death. The real cause is fear.

My vantage point of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s changed me forever. It’s the reason I have refused for years to vote for anybody who wants to make me afraid.

That doesn’t mean I am free of fear. There are very real dangers in the world around us. So we lock our doors and buy insurance and install security systems.

The problem isn’t fear per se, but those who use it to control us. Those who paint pictures of inner-city chaos, killers and drug dealers pouring across our borders, people of different religions, or people who love differently, for the purpose of getting our votes. It might surprise you that this is an attitude I inherited from my father, who felt deeply that race mixing was dangerous and yet took pride in refusing to ever vote for George Wallace.

As I write this, we are just months from very important elections. I don’t know who will get my vote yet, but I will be looking for those who invite me to be better, and believe in a better future. This is why nobody who preaches fear will ever get my vote.

We don’t have to revert to a lifeboat mentality

Posted on January 31, 2017 Written by Lindsay Fernandes

By Lindsay Fernandes

When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a teacher who was universally disliked for being really boring and really hard. His monotone reminds me of that teacher from The Wonder Years who put everybody to sleep. He loved philosophy, and his classes were more subjective than objective.

So obviously, I sort of liked him. He taught me AP American History, and although I have a certain working knowledge of that subject that I’m sure came from him, there was one particular moment from that class that stuck with me.

He split the desks in his classroom up to form several clumps, probably three or four desks together in each group, and told us to imagine that these represented boats. And he drew names so that a chosen few of us, maybe one or two per each grouping of desks, could sit on top of each “boat.” Not in chairs, but on top. And then the rest of the class had to sit on the floor. He told us in no uncertain terms that the students sitting on boats, of which I happened to be one, had the responsibility of making sure that each boat stayed afloat. He said that we were the smartest ones, the ones with the knowledge to keep those boats afloat, and that if we allowed more than one or two other students to sit with us, our boats would sink and we would all perish in the churning sea. So to speak.

And then he let the students on the floor fight it out. They tried to board our boats, and we supposedly tried to beat them away with imaginary oars. Some of the boat captains did a great job; I did not. I could not tell my fellow students that they couldn’t board my boat. I could not tell my fellow students that they would have to drown so that I could remain afloat. I let them all in, and I remember feeling a little sheepish, because I was maybe the only one that took the exercise quite so seriously. But I found this lesson powerful and disturbing enough to have retained it in my psyche for fifteen or so years.

Now best I can remember this was a unit on Plato’s allegory of the ship, which, it’s worth noting, is actually a defense of monarchy rule, certainly not a recommendation of democracy. I’m not entirely sure that’s right though, because what remains with me best is the lesson learned, not the philosopher.

The point is, I got the point.

We, as a nation, have long rejected this philosophy. The idea that we have to defend what’s ours at the cost of all others. The idea that we need to beat the riffraff away from our boat, or they’ll take us down with them.

The idea that we need to close our borders against any and all that believe differently than we do.

The idea that cruelty against the masses is justified as long as the chosen, the powerful, the knowledgeable, are safe.

The idea that one all powerful, all knowing ruler knows what’s best for the rest of us and is entitled to use that knowledge as total power. Our very constitution, in fact, guards us against these ideas. Ideas that our forefathers found not only restrictive and outdated, but dangerous.

I’ve been particularly disturbed this past weekend by what I’ve seen our new leader doing in the name of nationalism. I’ve been particularly disturbed to see innocent people stranded, rejected, left dangling in limbo without a home or a safe haven. Children separated from their parents with a cold dismissive cruelty. Allies of our nation unable to find their way home, and told, in fact, that they are no longer welcome for reasons of birth or religion. And all the while, our leader publicly mocks those, like me, who shed tears for their neighbors in this world.

What is even more disturbing to me is to hear friends defending these actions as necessary for our safety and well being as a nation.

But our boat will sink! They might say.

I rejected this notion as a sophomore in high school, and I reject this notion now.

Goodness is not a weakness, but a strength.
Diversity is not a weakness, but a strength.
Kindness is not a weakness, but a strength.
Love is not a weakness, but a strength.
Inclusion is not a weakness, but a strength.

Fear, I believe, is the greatest weakness of all, followed closely by division. I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it.

I will not fear my neighbor.