Rarely does a day go by when the news does not provide us with stories of persons young and old killed on city streets in every part of our great nation. Likewise, one can read on almost a daily basis about the suffering of the poor and the needy, the incredible financial challenges facing our children in college, the terrible stories of abuse and neglect of too many of our American children. And what are we as a community in America doing about all of the above? Little if anything because, too many of our so-called religiously observant are spending their time opposing gay marriages and abortions while they also work hard to support many of our states with their legislative attempts to limit the rights of women when it comes to health issues and choices.   We are a nation of diversity. Would that all of us could come together to work on issues that actually threaten our nation’s health. If only the majority of the religious among us would begin to follow the tenants which call for all of us to help the poor and the needy, while permitting their God to be the actual and final arbiter of issues like homosexuality and women’s rights and choices.

We in America spend too much time lobbing verbal dirtballs at our political leaders. Republicans or Democrats, it doesn’t matter. The behavior is pretty much the same. And why is it this way? Because name-calling appears to work so much better than debates over whether or not universal health care would work better for us than what we now have, or whether our preventive war syndrome, which has been leading us for decades into wars, has actually worked for our benefit.And what about these questions? Should we, like so many of our Western allies, be spending federal and state funds to repair our infrastructure? Did the high income tax brackets of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s actually hurt us or help us as a nation? Were the rich hurt by these high brackets of between 82 percent and 91 percent or were they helped? Were the poor and middle class hurt or helped?

I think there are a lot of good questions out there for us as a nation to examine and debate. But if we did that, we’d have to stop calling our president and people like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Sen. Ted Cruz interesting names. And then where would the fun be?