Talk about falling short of our American dream, here's a news item that should rankle the nerves of us all. My immediate thought after reading this item was where was the hospital administrator in all of this. How long should it have taken the administrator to advise the racist parent that his options were to allow for any and all competent nurses and physicians to care for the child or to go to another hospital?

DETROIT (AP) — It's been called one of medicine's "open secrets" — allowing patients to refuse treatment by a doctor or nurse of another race.

In the latest example, a white man with a swastika tattoo insisted that black nurses not be allowed to touch his newborn. That led several black nurses to sue the Michigan hospital, claiming it bowed to his illegal demands, and a rapid settlement in one of their lawsuits.

The Michigan cases are among several lawsuits filed in recent years that highlight this seldom-discussed issue, which quietly persists almost 60 years after the start of the civil rights movement.

The American Medical Association's ethics code bars doctors from refusing to treat people based on race, gender and other criteria, but there are no specific policies for handling race-based requests from patients.

As usual, I appear to be missing something. Some facts that support the cry by the Republican party against the concept of raising the minimum wage for workers who now earn less than 15 thousand dollars for a full year’s worth of work. I need some facts which make it okay that the gap between the rich and the poor and middle class continues to grow wider and wider. I need facts that downplay the claims by knowledgeable economists that during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s when tax bracket rates for the rich were more than twice as high as they now are, America, and especially America’s middle class did extremely well even as the rich remained wealthy.



I thought we in America were a community. I thought we were in it for the long run. I thought we were a mixture of capitalism with threads of “we the people” attached to our system so that our “we the people” government, could on occasion, be counted on to help our nation stay on course so that all of us, the rich, the poor and the all in between, would have the chance, the opportunity, to do well.



I appear to be missing something, but I believe the truth is, we as a nation need to get back to our basics. We are, after all is said and done, a "We The People" nation. We are in this together.  

When it comes to the never ending arguments over political and social issues, I am one of those who is lost in the woods and unable to truly get involved with the arguments. This is not to say that I don’t have my beliefs be they for universal health care or wars to be fought only when actually attacked and only as a last resort to protect ourselves.

But my mind and heart are still caught in the memories of World War Two and the national and communal joining of hands that took place as we as a nation strove to overcome one of the greatest challenges to face our nation.

I remember being with my father as he worked on his victory garden with his many neighbors and friends in order to contribute to the war effort given that he was too old to serve in the military. I recall the stories I heard from my uncle Nate who served with the navy during World War Two. When I became old enough to study the full impact that World War Two created for us, I discovered that few if any of our citizens complained about high tax rates even when the highest rate for the wealthy rose to 82% of certain levels of income. As far as I can tell, almost to a person, our American citizens during this terrible war, threw all of themselves into whatever they could do to help bring us to victory.

My mind and heart are also caught up in my experiences with many of the religious faithful during my growing up years. No matter whether I was with my Catholic, Protestant or Jewish friends and families, I was learning from their actions that first and foremost, our job, after taking care of ourselves and family, was to be there for the poor and the needy and to be there for the community, be it local, state or national.

Were there signs around us of bigotry and hatred for some who looked different from the eye of the beholder? Yes. Did prejudice play a negative role in America’s continuing effort to be a nation which could provide all of our citizens with the rights given to us by our enduring federal constitution? Yes.

Here is the thing. America remains a nation that continues to strive for the freedom of individuals to be all that they can be. But I see us also as a “United States of America,” a nation that is a community dedicated to ensuring that each and every one of us will have opportunities to make us as individuals, and us as a communal nation, the best that we can be. I hear a different thread when I listen to the vitriolic dialogue taking place today in our nation's po

I continue to have hopes that we the people of the United States of America will continue to live out the dreams given to us by our founding fathers and mothers. To this end, I hope that our local and national dialogues will soon begin to better reflect our hopes and dreams.

As Chuck Hagel makes his way through the nomination process for a position as secretary of defense, I cannot help but think of those times in our past when there were many decent and thoughtful speakers on behalf of conservative causes here in America. Now it would appear that former senator Hagel is one of a very few who are willing to speak honestly and openly about their views. If one needs an example of just how far off track the conservative pundits and politicians have drifted from the days of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, one need only look at the attacks being leveled by conservatives at one of their former Republican colleagues. In Hagel, we have a man who honorably served our nation during the Vietnam War and who earned both injuries and honor for his service. Yet, when Hagel stands to fight first for America’s interests, suddenly he is seen by those who disagree with his views as un-American. What is especially sad about this turn of events as they apply to Chuck Hagel is that most of his critics, almost every one of them, have never served a day in America’s armed forces let alone fought, as he did, in a war for us.

This is not the first time that America has seen a wave of hypocrisy over shadow our political and social world. One need only think of the McCarthy years in the late 1940s and early 1950s to understand this point. And it is because we eventually withstood and overcame Joseph McCarthy’s terrible moments that I remain hopeful we in America will do likewise with our current challenges.

All I can say is I'm never surprised by the hypocrisy that stands tall in America and throughout the world. Look at those from every religion who call for all of us to be spiritual even as those calling out openly ignore the main threads of their religions ..... to be there for the poor and the needy, to treat others as you would want to be treated. Instead, those so vocal in their spirituality will stand tall to deny the "others" what they have because those who look different than they or those who may have sexual preferences different from their own, and those who may not be of the  appropriate gender should not have the power that the more spiritual have been given by their God.

Oh well. I just listened to this song by Garth Brooks and I feel better already.
       Yours,
       

Garth Brooks
Lyrics: Standing Outside The Fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHJW-3EGqKs

We call them cool
Those hearts that have no scars to show
The ones that never do let go
And risk it the tables being turned

We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always come with getting burned

But you got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire
We call them strong
Those who can face this world alone
Who seem to get by on their own
Those who will never take the fall

We call them weak
Who are unable to resist
The slightest chance love might exist
And for that forsake it all

They're so hell bent on giving, walking a wire
Convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire

[Chorus:]
Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire

There's this love that is burning
Deep in my soul
Constantly yearning to get out of control
Wanting to fly higher and higher
I can't abide standing outside the fire

One would think, given all of the craziness in our world today, that I would be sitting at my computer ready to slam out a written piece on the craziness of our fellow human beings. According to science, humans began to evolve as a specie some two hundred thousand years ago. Which raises a question. Why did it take us one hundred ninety eight thousand, one hundred and thirty seven years to discover that our earth was round? And this being the case, should we humans be surprised that so many of us, even in this day, carry around in our hearts and minds bigoted concepts that threaten the very existence of fellow human beings. So, faced with the constancy of wars and poverty and so many other challenges to our human existence, why am I not jumping on the bandwagon to push for solutions to our problems?

I don’t have an answer. But I do know that I find my time far better spent looking at old Andy Griffith shows. Take for instance yesterday. There was Andy Griffith in his Andy Taylor role getting ready to punish his son Opie for lying to his father about his recent school report card. But Opie was nowhere to be found. And on Opie’s bed was a note explaining to his dad that Opie had decided to run away.

When Andy Taylor found Opie walking on the road out of town, Andy’s first question to his son was why was he running away? And Opie explained. He felt he had let his father down with his bad grades and his failure to tell him of his grades and Opie had decided to run away and to find a way to do something that might work to earn back his father’s respect for Opie.

And that’s when Andy sat down with Opie and told him that he, Andy, had been wrong to make it seem that all that mattered to him was that Opie had gotten wonderful grades. Opie, his father said to him, you always only need to do the best that you can. In the end, I love and respect you for who you are and not for what your grades are.

And I thought .... Amen.

Last night, my friend Phil reminded me that one of our favorite songs from the 1960s is still quite relevant in today’s world. We were six of us together last night and as we sang the song, we felt the strong message still being ignored by too many of us throughout our nation and throughout the world. Indeed, whether it be the hundreds of thousands of shooting deaths that have occurred in America during the past decade, or the many thousands of our soldiers lost in our wars of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, “how many deaths will it take till (we) know that too many people have died” as they have died?

Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ In The Wind”

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man ?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand ?
Yes, how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea ?
How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free ?
Yes, how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn't see ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

I am now and I have long been a supporter of Israel and it's right to exist? I recognize that Israel has often been put through the ringer by many of its neighbors and, at times, by the United Nations. In 1974, I put my actions where my words were and led a group of volunteers to Israel where we worked on a kibbutz for the summer in order to help Israel in its economic recovery after its 1973 war with Egypt.

Having said all of this, I must also acknowledge that Israel is a complicated country and that on occasion, Israel itself can make decisions that tend to diminish its own interests.

Dror Moreh  is an Israeli cinematographer and film director and he has recently produced a documentary about Israel titled  "The Gatekeepers.” This film looks at the lives of six surviving members of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, and it raises critical questions about Israel and whether or not Israel is doing damage to itself through its current foreign policy efforts.

Based upon what I have read about this film, I am determined to see it. I admit that I worry, as apparently do the Shin Bet officers, that the situation in Israel is deteriorating and that Israel needs more than just a strong military to survive. There are no easy answers for the likes of the challenges which face Israel. My hope is that the thoughts being shared with the world by people like Dror Moreh will make a positive difference for Israel and for us all.