Perhaps There Should Be a War on Hate and Ignorance Here at Home

I am not a big believer in war as the answer to much. But as much as we point fingers at Syria and Iraqi insurgents and Iran and North Korea, I think maybe it's time to start pointing some fingers right here at home.

Part of this country is engaging in a huge war here. It's not Republicans vs. Democrats (although that political war is raging, too) but rightwing nutjobs who wave the Bible and profess their Christianity while spewing nothing but hate.

Their God is a vengeful one out to get everyone who is not like them. Their God offers no hope of redemption for sinners like gays, liberals, Democrats and moderate Republicans, pacifists, women who consider abortions and doctors who perform them, people of a different color or religion or interpretation of Christianity, judges who try to be fair and act by rule of law rather than rule of the God the nutjobs know, scientists, teachers, et al. The list of people they hate grows longer with each passing day.

They see Bush's selection and re-selection (thank you Christ and Diebold) as their ascendancy to the throne. In Bush, they have someone willing to ignore the fact that our country was founded as a secular place, that evolution probably makes more sense than woman being created from the rib of Adam, and that living women should have more rights than a mass of cells contained in her body.

I don't think we can afford to ignore these people simply as nutjobs or think that the horrible murders of Judge Joan Leflow's husband and sick elderly mother were just a random act of hatred.

In Bush's America, these very dangerous people are rising in power and volume. Left unchecked, they will take over the Supreme Court, the entire legal system, Congress, everything. There will be no more checks and balances if this happened. Not believing in God or assuming a woman can make a choice over her own body are likely to become capitol offenses punishable by execution.

Those of us who don't want to see our country overcome by hatred and ignorance, who believe in the core values instilled by our forefathers and then corrupted by greedy politicians, perhaps need to recognize this for the war it is and become active warriors in the cause. This pacifist does not say this lightly either. The Lefkow murders this week have opened my eyes.

But I'm not talking about fighting with guns and arrows and hatred, but with weapons that truly scare these people: intelligence, reason, fairness, tolerance. And we can't let up in our fight.