Hatred never cures hatred; but then again, maybe it will, eventually

So this is an odd beginning to what was supposed to be a blog about being a small town dad. Nothing here yet about little league or cookouts or racing bikes with cards in our spokes.  Good topics all and I promise to keep them for future reference, really.  This one starts with hate and intolerance - hooray - I know - just what you tuned in for.  I’ll see if I can’t work in the Small Town Dad stuff somehow in a way that all makes sense.

So, I’ve been reading, along with much of the country, about this “church” in Georgia that is set to burn the Koran this weekend. My first thought, I confess, was of Dr. Henry Jones (played by Sean Connery in the third of the Indiana Jones movies) when he said to Ilsa words to the effect “perhaps you should spend less time burning books, and more time reading them.” One of my favorite lines from any movie.

In reality I no more ever read the Koran than I have ever burned one, so I am no expert on the subject. No idea whatsoever what its doctrine is.  Maybe it is loathsome from cover to cover, I don't know.  But my academic background is in journalism and law – so I do have a few opinions about burning books. I believe that burning a book, or a flag, or an effigy, horrible as those gestures are, is a manifestation of our protected free speech rights. I personally think these acts are repugnant and have no place in a civilized society. But, then again; the First Amendment does not only protect popular speech, it protects the unpopular speech as well - perhaps moreso. So let's begin with this:

I believe people have a right to be as ignorant and judgmental and uninformed as they want to be.

If they want to put that on display, so be it. It certainly sells soesn't it? If the news crews didn’t show up, none of us would even know it was happening. It's not like Fox or CNN ever broke into their regular programming to scream "HEY, Everything's OK!  Looks like it's gonna be ok for a while too!  so go back to what you were doing, nothing happening here at all..."

All of which brings me to my point: Hatred never cures hatred. It never has (yet).

The legacy of the world’s most successful civil rights activists teaches us all the lesson we would otherwise love to forget – that hatred does not cure hatred; intolerance does not cure intolerance; and contempt for another’s beliefs is no righteous path to common ground or civility. Hatred, intolerance, contempt for others – those are all self-indulgent emotions made to make us feel better by judging someone else to be collectively worse than us, our family, our group, our religion, our county, our whatever.

Hatred breeds hatred, or so I thought.

I thought long and hard about this idea, being a small town dad with a 20 minute commute 4 times a day, because I wonder how I will ever explain these things to my kids. We live in the country in a fairly homogenous little town.  To a ten year old, burning books sounds actually kinda fun if you pick the right books – math books or the journal their teacher makes them keep. They can’t conceive of a universe where the act of burning the cornerstone work of a person’s faith is meant to demonstrate to that person “you are worthless, what you think sacred, I think worthless. There can be no common ground between us - you are my enemy simply because of what you believe.” Kids don’t think that way. They have to be taught to think that way.

So, thinking about these things on my 20 minute commute 4 times a day, I thought that if the subject came up, I would try and teach the two little frogs who share my pond, ages 10 and almost 4, that hatred cannot cure hatred. I am very lucky because mine are compassionate kids. Their mother is as warm-hearted a person as I have ever met. So half the battle was won already – start with kind kids. And to start with kind kids, you have to make it a point to try and raise kind kids.  My wife gets all the credit there, too.

As I searched for a more practical analogy to a ten year old and his four year old sister, I thought I would say that when we go to the doctor for a cold, he doesn’t expose us to MORE cold germs, he exposes us to…wait a minute…

“Mr. Armistead, Dr. Jonas Salk is calling for you on line two….”

Of course the logic hit me just as it did you. In fact, we DO cure illness with exposure to the illness itself. Already you are thinking of the Polio vaccine, flu vaccines made from recombinant DNA of the flu virus; and of course anyone with allergies in need of allergy shots has already picked up on my bad logic.

So maybe the key to eradicating hatred isn’t a lack of hatred, it is a recognition of hatred.  An understanding of hatred and a difficult but essential conversation about the consequence of hatred. Maybe the words from parents should be words encouraging their children to listen; to gather facts and actually deliberate over them. Maybe that’s how we cure hatred. Honestly, does anyone truly believe that somewhere in this world of 6 billion people there isn’t the Muslim equivalent of themself – perhaps a family man with beautiful kids who worries about their future – or a mom who sings at night and works hard to keep her kids safe from harm?

In a sense, I guess we have to look at the book burners and give reluctant thanks for giving us the cause to engage this topic with our kids; to be the object lesson of why hatred never works. I hope their vile speech ends with just that, speech, and that no lives are lost or servicemen and women placed in further jeopardy.

For sure I hate like hell to thank them, but I can at least give them credit.

So anyhow, thanks for stopping by.

Dennis