A rising tide against the fear...

One of the signs of hope that I discern in these crazy and fear-filled times can be found in a rising tide that offers an alternative to the fear, lies and sleaze-mongering. Take, for example, this PSA from Muslims who are also loyal and committed to the best American values... now HERE'S the America I know and cherish!

Or consider the open letter Jim Wallis of SOJOURNERS community to Glenn Beck that begins...

Dear Glenn: I think we got off on the wrong foot. I listened to your speech last Saturday and heard a lot of things that we agree on. In fact, I have used some of the same language of our need to turn to God, and the values of “faith, hope, and charity” (love). What I would like to find out, and others would too, is what you mean by that language. Until last weekend, you have consistently described yourself primarily as an entertainer, and the public has known you as a talk show host. But last Saturday, you sounded more like an evangelist or revivalist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I know we disagree significantly on many issues of public policy, but you said that people can disagree on politics and still agree on basic values and try to come together. Maybe we should test that. Instead of my being up on your blackboard and a regular target of your show’s rhetoric, why don’t we finally have that civil dialogue I invited you to months ago? Your speech on the Mall suggested and even promised a change of heart on your part, so why don’t we talk? Here are a few things I think we could talk about. (for the whole text go to: http://blog.sojo.net/2010/09/02/an-open-letter-to-glenn-beck/)

And for still another take entirely on calling US-revisionists out on their absurd and deceptive re-writing of history, consider Rachel Maddow's show tonight: her blog notes...

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour wants you to believe that the South's great struggle with segregation was over by the time he came of age. His supposedly post-racial cohort "led the change of parties in the South," from Democratic to Republican, he says in an interview published yesterday by Human Events. "My generation ... went to integrated schools," Gov. Barbour continues. "I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it."

That didn't sound quite right to us, since Mississippi schools integrated only in 1970, years after the 62-year-old Barbour would have graduated from Yazoo City High School. He then went to Ole Miss, which admitted its first black freshman in 1964, according to Dr. Charles Eagles, an Ole Miss history professor and author of The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss. That likely would have been either the year Mr. Barbour started at Ole Miss, or the year just before.

The actual shows goes deeper - and contains a very appropriate rant by Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson about rewriting Jim Crow reality - which you can check out here:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#38983430

There are NO guarantees, of course, that any of this goes beyond preaching to the choir. But once again the experience of Germany's Bonhoeffer is illustrative. He challenged his colleagues and church leaders to stand up for the Jews. He went so far as to say that "You have no right to sing Gregorian chants unless you are standing up for the Jews." In our day that would be you have no right to claim the mantel of Jesus Christ and his grace unless you are making space for all of God's children - especially the most despised - who at this moment in America are the Muslims.


My man in song, The Boss, puts it like this...