Another day another tragedy in America! Going to your church is supposed to be a place of worship, a place of peace, a sanctuary from the troubles of the world. It is not supposed to be a place where a young man can bring a gun to a House of God to kill the minister and some of the church goers.
When one sees what happened yesterday in Charleston, one wonders whether it is the terrorists from abroad that we have to worry about the most but rather the terrorist from within. Hate breeds hate.
Hate groups exist in many of our states, heck there are around 70 even in my state of California. Instead of trying to bring democracy to Iraq we should be working on our own problems. The KKK has two groups in South Carolina. White power and white pride groups find a sanctuary in one of our very own states.
Many years ago, in 1963, the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, woke up America to the unseen hate that existed in parts of America. A lot of Americans were blinded to the hate that existed towards blacks in America. It took the savage and cruel deaths of children to wake us up.
What the young man who killed so many innocents yesterday said about why he was doing it speaks volumes. Fox News may pretend that this was not a hate crime but what other meaning can you take from the young man’s words other than hate.
South Carolina has a storied and sordid history of their relations with black people going back to the day when slave auctions took place in Charleston, South Carolina. We like to forget that actual human beings were sold as if they were a horse or a piece of meat.
The Confederate flag still flies proudly above the capitol grounds of the state of South Carolina. For a state to still fly a flag in the 21st century that represents what that flag represents for every black American is truly amazing and horrifying. Our Civil War started in Charleston harbor, when the first cannon shot was fired on Fort Sumter. The north did not fire the first shot. It was the home of southern slavery. The war was about slavery not about state sovereignty. State’s rights was just an excuse for inhuman behavior towards their fellow man.
Conservatives like to blame this kind of violence on the fact that there is more black on black crime while conveniently forgetting that there is a large white on white percentage because we live in a predominately segregated society.
Now many other shots have been fired but this time in a church. We all share the same country and we share the same God. The shooter is not some deranged wild eyed young white person who has bought a gun and brought it with him into a mall or a school or a movie theater but into a House of God. This is an angry young white male, attempting to rid America of those he believes do not belong. It is not a gun issue but a hate issue. When will we stop killing one another based upon someone’s skin color?
It is time to fix America. It is not just the bridges and roads that need fixing, it is the American spirit and our own ethical or lack of ethical conduct towards our fellow Americans that needs fixing. It is time to heal and feel sorrow for the deaths of so many innocents, who die only because they are different. We don’t have to worry about being attacked when we are rotting from within. It is time to get our own house in order. As candidate, Abraham Lincoln once said, ” A House Divided against Itself can not stand.”
Politics From The Middle 
With the 24 hour news coverage on this horrific event, I have yet to hear any of the pundits raise the question of how this much hate in a young man of only 21 years could escape being detected by his parents.
Of course they claim shock BUT I am one who believes WE KNOW our children and if we don’t we certainly should.
I venture to say his home environment helped to foster his mindset. I venture further to say his parent’s hands are not clean.
The day one of my daughters told me, in a very angry tone, how she hated Asians, I asked her to explain. She hated them, she said, because they always had the right answers in class and got A’s on the exams.
A concerned and non-racist parent counteracts this kind of thinking.
“Well, do the Asian students spend their time studying and going to the library? Do you do that? Or aren’t you at the hip-shaking parties on the weekend?”
I dare to believe the “Church Murderer” has harbored ugly hateful thoughts for years AND his parents never stepped up to the plate to dispel them BECAUSE they too shared his perspective but just didn’t go to a bible study with a gun.
Instead they sent their son. The parents are probably shocked to discover what we teach our children, even by omission of the necessary lessons, they will carry the torch.
In this very tragic case, the torch was a Bible and a five times loaded gun.
I hope the coming together of many in Charleston is more than just a symbol of people becoming closer and in a true sense a better community. What I think is needed is a national recognition that as they used to say,”Houston we have a problem.” The problem being hate and racism..How do we deal with hate groups and parents who teach their children to hate are the first thoughts that come to my mind?
Yet, Gar, I still can’t abide the idea of “thought police”.
There should always be the freedom to believe what you want as long as you don’t act out in a criminal or hateful way and hurt someone. Plato talked about the limit of freedom being when you hurt someone. That can even be in libelous or slanderous language harming a person’s reputation. Your thoughts are your own.