Fixin' Supper

I don’t ever want to hear again that Tennessee is a pro-business state. The General Assembly last night drove a stake in the heart of its majority’s own argument last night.

Let’s lay out my biases on the front end:

• I’m a life-long Tennessean.
• I’m a fairly liberal Democrat [raised by two Republicans].
• I’m a Vanderbilt graduate.
• I own a small business and have 3 employees.
• And I cannot for the life of me see how anyone still thinks Tennessee’s government is making this an attractive place to do business.

You want low taxes? OK, fine, we’ve got that. And if you’re in an industry that likes to pollute the earth and not be too concerned about cleaning things up, we’re still a decent place for you.

But last night, our state legislature passed a bill telling the second largest private employer in the state how to run its business. Senate Bill 3597 carries no financial penalties, but it identifies Vanderbilt University by the volume of state funding it receives [more than $24 million, largely for medical care provided at Vanderbilt University Medical Center] — no other private university fits that description.

Here’s what the legislature is so worked up about:

Vanderbilt has what’s being called an “all-comers” policy, which means that if you’re a student organization, you can’t put additional restrictions on your members or leadership — you can’t discriminate. In practice, this is a nonissue for the vast majority of student groups. The ones that squawked about it are conservative religious organizations, which want the ability to discriminate in who they accept and/or make leaders.

One of the catalysts for the policy seems to be the assertion that a couple of years ago, a Christian group expelled two of its members for being gay, thus violating Vanderbilt’s existing non-discrimination policy.

So the General Assembly wants to stand up for the “religious freedom” of student groups, and it passed a law to that effect last night.

I got two questions:

• What about when a conservative group from another religion comes along and only allows women in if they, say, wear a burka? That OK with the General Assembly, because it has to do with religion? Or, what if a conservative group promotes female genital mutilation, again in the name of religion? Is the General Assembly willing to protect that?Of course not! Let’s be clear: What this is really about is that some — certainly not all — religious groups want the ability to continue to discriminate against LGBT people. And the Tennessee General Assembly would like to help them, because they seem to specialize lately in promoting an activist conservative social agenda.
• What I’m really wondering about is what the General Assembly will do when it realizes that Dell annually gets an award from the Human Rights Campaign for its exceptionally LGBT friendly policies? And, more importantly, what will other businesses do when they realize that despite the “low cost” of doing business here in terms of taxes, they’ll have to add to their lobbying budget to fend off the General Assembly’s interference in their human resources policies?

My own business depends on this area being a vital place that attracts innovative businesses. The General Assembly is doing everything it can to let the world know that Tennessee is not a welcoming environment for diverse, innovative companies — and it puts my business at risk when it does.

So, I’ve been thinking off and on about the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now, I’m pretty darn liberal on most things, so the fact that I’m only half paying attention is not a good sign.

But I will say this. Americans are fond of saying that there’s no class system here. And that’s complete bullshit.

America is different — not because there is no class — but because it happens to be quite possible to transcend class. It exists all right, but it doesn’t have to define you here. It’s a lot harder to rise than it is to fall, but both are possible. Whatever their downsides, capitalism and a decent public education system are what make this possible.

So how do we explain the current protest — as well as other protests we’ve seen off and on the past few years?

To my mind, we’re seeing at least a partial breakdown of the grand bargain of American politics of the last 40 years. That bargain has been between the wealthy, largely Republican, group and the working-class, mostly white, group. And the deal has been, you go with us on economics, we’ll go with you on social issues, and we’ll all go home happy. The unspoken side of this is: Siding with the rich folks economically nods and winks at the idea that you, too, can be rich one day, you know, you hold your tongue right and all.

And when I see what’s happening on Wall Street, I think that a lot of people don’t like the deal anymore. They don’t see the pathway to upward mobility. They’re working harder than ever and they have less to show for it. And they see some wealthy Wall Street types enjoying fat returns while the rest of the country pays for them.

I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate assessment of the current economic situation, but I can absolutely, 100% see how you’d view things that way.

I originally published this in September 2006. I re-read it tonight and it’s still my best work on what that day meant to me at the time.

So on 9/11, the real one, I was in DC. I was watching CNN when the first plane hit the WTC, and all the news anchors thought it was a Cessna. That was what they kept saying, over and over again. "This looks like a Cessna." And they talked about the time a plane hit the Empire State building. And I thought, man, that is weird, how a plane can just hit a building, like nothing. And I flipped off the TV and rolled my suitcase downstairs and checked out of the hotel.

I was on a business trip with my boss at the time and two clients. Three of us stood around in the lobby forever, waiting on Linda. And when she finally came down, she said, "Another plane hit the other tower." And none of us believed her, of course. We spent five minutes arguing with her until our car came from the valet, and we all got in and we turned on NPR, and then we all shut up real fast and we rode into DC from Pentagon City in silence.

Since that’s where we were riding in from, we drove right by the pristine Pentagon.

By the time we got to our destination, 15 or 20 minutes later, parked our car in a garage and walked into the office building, our colleagues there were telling us about the Pentagon being hit. The same one we just drove by.

Well then it was obvious we wouldn’t be having any meetings that day. Fortunately, everyone at the office there has a TV, so we stood around for quite some time watching the news. Then [the office is four blocks from the White House] someone decided there was another plane headed for Washington, and we should evacuate to the basement. Now, this did not sound like a good idea to us Nashville folks. So experienced in emergency management. Also perhaps a bit claustrophobic. And a little more unlikely to do what we’re told, apparently. [I actually remember very distinctly a conversation between two DC folks I knew there, one questioning whether it was wise to go to the basement, should something happen to the building. The other, a military veteran, said, "You'll go where they tell you to go." That was immediately before the Nashville people instead went outside.]

So the four of us, and some others, hung about outside for an hour? 30 minutes? — I have no idea any more — anxiously watching for rogue planes. They had locked us out of the building. Like we were the terrorists or something.

Eventually they decided that it was OK for us to come back in, so we did, and everyone was allowed back from the basement.

By that point, though nothing was official, it was clear we weren’t flying anywhere that day and probably not the next, so we started talking about driving home. [Side note: I am not sure I have ever discussed this day in such detail since its immediate aftermath, and now, writing all this out, my chest is getting tight and I am really having trouble focusing. At the time, I would have told you I was not stressed out. And until right now, I have said that it was not particularly stressful, that I had no sense at all of actually being in any danger. More on that in a minute.]

So we got in the car, incredibly grateful that we’d even gotten a rental on this trip, since we normally didn’t. Apparently Linda went out to get her bag from Reagan. I had forgotten about that part until she said it today. I just remember driving out past the smoking, smoldering Pentagon, a massive, gaping crater in the side, where just hours before it had looked so normal that you barely noticed it.

Another aside: Never, ever take a two-day road trip under incredibly stressful conditions with people who hate road trips, even if you really like those people.

Also: It is possible to get sick of NPR on a two-day road trip when that’s all there is to listen to and all they’re saying is how the world is pretty much coming to an end.

Although: No matter what, Virginia is always a beautiful state to drive through.

So we got home and I have never, ever been so glad to see the rental car terminal at Nashville International. Not ever.

After it was over, I really didn’t think I’d been through that much except a long road trip and a sucky day. I mean, the people who lost someone, they went through something. They still are. Me, that was nothing.

It wasn’t until weeks later that someone said something that made me stop and think a bit. They said, you know, they think Flight 93 was headed for Washington. Those people may have saved your life.

I immediately dismissed that. Well of course the people on 93 are heroes. I didn’t doubt that for a minute. But not in relation to me. Frankly I thought it was a bit narcissistic to think I had anything to do with it.

Over time, I’ve started to think about it a bit differently. I’ve always had trouble accepting a gift. It’s so much easier to give than to receive; many of us would say the same. And I think, deep down, I don’t want it to be the case that Flight 93 was destined for anywhere near me. How large a burden would that be, to know that someone died in saving your life? Of course, there’s no way to know, and certainly they wouldn’t have been aiming for the office building I was in. There was definitely no high-profile national security target there.

But I have come to accept that it wasn’t nothing.

First, please take a quick skim through this article on a Nashvillian who is suing Google for invading his privacy.

Back? Great. [I know, you didn't actually go read it. Short story: To create the street view option that Google Maps offers of so many parts of the country, the company literally sends cars topped with cameras to drive roads all over the country. In order to best determine the location of any image, the cars are equipped with a device that can tap into any unsecured wireless networks [like the one at your house or your coffee shop] and pull down location data from them. In the process, Google may have had access to any information available on the unsecured networks, though the company says it didn’t use or keep any private information. Some idiot from Nashville is among those suing Google.]

If you’re not familiar with internet safety protocols at all, let me just share with you a quick rule:
If you have information on your computer that other people shouldn’t see, you shouldn’t use unsecured networks. That includes your credit card number, your banking password, the files from your employer full of private health information.

In the paper, that’s what this guy is mad about. He says he had access to other people’s private health information [that's federally protected data, folks] and that he’s mad that Google may have had access to that.

But so did anyone else who happened to be within range of his [or his favorite coffee shop's] network. You don’t have to be Google to tap into someone’s unsecured network and do something with their data.

The ONLY person he can be angry with is himself. And possibly his clients, for trusting him with information that he doesn’t appear to be capable of protecting.

P.S. You also shouldn’t expect data security on “secured” but widely available networks, ones where there IS a password, but everyone gets the same password — a lot of coffee shops have this kind of setup. Unless you’ve interviewed everyone in the shop to know how they are or aren’t hacking into your computer, don’t do it.

Rest assured, my temper tantrum has a happy ending. :)

So Monday, I stopped in at 3rd and Church Healthcare, which I’ve grown to love the past year or so. They can always see you, Jason Boylan is wonderful, and [nice for me] it’s [depending on what you're there for] not always as expensive as a regular doctor’s office visit.

Jason gave me a prednisone prescription and a referral to a rheumatologist. Later, the office called to let me know the new rheumatologist could see me today. What a miracle! Jason’s assessment was, it might be good to go ahead and get the ring off, but if I wanted to wait a day or so and see what happened, I wasn’t hurting my finger further by doing so.

By this morning, I pretty much knew the ring had to go…I had seen some improvement in my 1st joint, below the ring, but if anything, my finger was a little worse. Still, as I told my mother this afternoon, no one voluntarily destroys their wedding ring. So I really wanted the doctor to tell me to cut it off. And he did. :) I got that done as soon as I finished at the doctor and my finger is looking better.

The doctor had new blood work drawn and we’re going to work on getting insurance approval for an MRI. He wants to look at my hand and make sure we’re not seeing any long-term joint damage. As long as we don’t, then I’ll take a mild drug for 6 months or so to make sure this is under control. If we do see damage or the blood work looks worse than it did the last time I had active RA, we have some other options.

But here’s the kicker. It’s likely not a coincidence that my RA flared up now. The 2yo finally finished nursing in the last 2-3 months — just before this happened. Guess when I started developing RA in the first place? 3 months after the 11yo weaned, about 10 years ago. While I was fortunate for the RA to go into remission several years ago, the pregnancy thing matters.

When you have RA, you not only have the auto-immune response of your body attacking its own joints, you also tend to have a low level of a protein that calms your inflammation response. Some RA drugs only stop the overactive part, and don’t address the lessened calming response. But when you’re pregnant, your body is pumping up production of the protein that calms your inflammation response — to protect the fetus. Apparently, if I’d developed RA as a young woman several decades ago, I’d have been advised to have a lot of kids, because RA tends to react positively to pregnancy for this reason.

Newer RA drugs do improve your body’s inflammation calming response, so if I need that, they’re out there. I’m hoping I don’t — I’m hoping this is a mild flare that is related to the changing protein levels as I’ve finished nursing and my body readjusts to normal. Incidentally, it’s probably why my rosacea flared up this spring. Same issue.

As to how I got such a whacked immune system in the first place, well, who knows. I can tell you I get colds and stomach viruses less often than the rest of the family, so it’s not all bad. I guess my immune system has to look inward for its amusement instead.

Oh, and don’t get any crazy ideas. I told the doctor that my husband would be giving me a hassle over this news….he’s always lobbied for another baby. But while many women have perfectly healthy pregnancies at my age, this store is closed. :)

I have rheumatoid arthritis. If I’ve got to have this nasty chronic ailment, I certainly can’t complain — I have an extremely mild case. In fact, my RA seems to have been in remission for the past 3-4 years. And apparently, that’s a huge problem.

About a month ago, my left ring finger started swelling badly at the first knuckle [the one where your finger connects to your palm]. Quickly, the swelling moved up toward the second joint, making it impossible to remove my wedding and engagement rings. I started taking significant quantities of Advil, hoping it would jolt my finger back into submission the way it did my knee last year. [More on that below.]

I did recently manage to get my engagement ring off, but apparently, my finger so disliked that that I haven’t been able to budge the wedding ring since [and the wedding ring is even a tiny bit bigger]. A couple of mornings this week, I’ve awakened to a finger so swollen that my ring is really painful. So this is not a good situation.

Reluctantly, I’ve finally admitted I need to get back to my rheumatologist. When I say reluctant, I’m serious — last year I lived through a month-long episode where I could barely walk, convincing myself [apparently correctly, as it turned out] that the problem with my knee a. did not require the steroids my primary care provider prescribed and b. was related to residual damage from my several-year bout of active RA, instead of being a “flare” — what you call it when the disease is active. Because going to the rheumatologist means you might actually be sick, you know? And nothing good comes of being sick with RA.

So at any rate, I struck out right away this morning when I found out that my rheumatologist’s practice has disbanded in the past few years. I Googled him to no avail [some advice, medical industry? SEO. You need this so badly. Data mining/spam/SEO content farms have totally sucked up all your Google juice. It wouldn't be hard to claim it, but you seem to be asleep to this basic marketing principle.], and then I sought recommendations for another rheumatologist on Facebook.

Within 2 hours, I had several good personal recommendations, so I tried one, at the Vanderbilt Medical Group. They pull up “my file” [how?? haven't been there -- apparently I've seen SOME Vanderbilt doctor], but when they see I don’t have an active relationship with one of their doctors, they tell me I have to go to primary care first. But then I notice on their web page — there’s my missing doctor! He’s joined the Vanderbilt practice! But he’s at the Cool Springs office instead of in town. So I say, hey, Dr. Douglas is my doctor, but can’t I see someone at the hospital office instead?

Well, no. It takes a voice mail and a message back [they were all very nice and very prompt], but because it’s been more than 3 years since I’ve seen Dr. Douglas, they don’t have my records [they're not electronic]; only he does. So I have to go there, see him, and get him to refer me back to someone at the hospital.

That’s dumb, but fine. So I call his office in Cool Springs. And again, I get nice people, but no help. Even worse, they tell me I can’t even see Dr. Douglas, because it’s been more than 3 years. Have to go to a PCP first. The first guy explains the 3-year policy. And I said, I totally get it, but who can help me make an exception to your policy? Because Dr. Douglas is my doctor. And it seems awfully silly to waste time and money seeing a primary care provider who is not an RA expert when I already know I need an RA expert. So he has the nurse call me.

Here’s the annoying part: The nurse explains that it is not a Vanderbilt policy that I need to see primary care first — it’s an insurance rule. [I'll get to how stupid this is in a minute....] Now, why didn’t the FIRST Vanderbilt person I spoke to, 4 phone calls ago, explain that? So I said, ah, while that is dumb, I get it. It’s a gate we have to go through for the insurance company to pay for my doctor visit. Yes. So if my primary care provider will refer me without seeing me, then we’re good? Yes.

Right now I have a call in to my primary care practice to see if this is possible. Something tells me it’s going to be illegal or insurance fraud for them to do this…what do you think?

The upshot is, it’s going to cost me not just the extra time [hello!! trying to make sure I keep my finger here!!] but also oh, say, an extra $100. I have high-deductible insurance with no copays, because I own a small business and that’s pretty affordable as far as insurance goes. But the catch is, when you go to the doctor, you pay every penny, until you hit your deductible. So, to see my PCP just to get the referral will cost me the price of an office visit…and then I’ll get to pay the whole amount of whatever it costs to see my rheumatologist, too. Because, like I said — I’m healthy, so I’ve probably just hit my deductible 4-5 times in my life.

So let’s recap:
I am so healthy that I can’t go see a rheumatologist. But I’m so sick that I don’t qualify for individual insurance. That’s right…I got turned down for individual insurance a couple of years ago when we were contemplating going that route. A few years of epilepsy and RA make you pretty damn uninsurable…but apparently, not qualified to go to the doctor.

So there’s been a simmering dispute in Nashville about how the city’s non-discrimination ordinance should be applied — whether it applies to city contractors. Metro added non-discrimination protection for sexual orientation and gender identity a couple of years ago for its own employees, and a proposed ordinance [spurred in part by Belmont University's firing its women's soccer coach, who not coincidentally, had recently told her players she and her female partner were expecting a baby] would require city contractors to abide by the same non-discrimination policies that Metro does.

Now the newly minted, Republican-majority Tennessee General Assembly is trying to do an end run around the Metro Council, with Rep. Glen Casada’s filing a bill that would prohibit Tennessee municipalities from adopting anti-discrimination policies that differ from federal law.

Where to begin?

I love to point out dramatic inconsistencies in theory, so let’s start with the fact that frequently, conservatives like to wave the banner of local control in hopes of forestalling some liberal nanny-state agenda. And here, the “conservative” voice would like to remove local and even state control by requiring us to follow the federal statute.

Or how about, cities and states often step ahead of the federal government on social issues, and for many issues, you can watch the changes slowly sweep across the country until the federal government affirms the new sensibility of the country. [This works for both liberals and conservatives, depending on which way the tide is going, of course.] Casada’s bill would effectively prohibit Tennessee from giving the federal government any feedback.

More importantly, from a business perspective, just who is really helped here? I guess all the folks out there just waiting for a good excuse to fire their LBGT employees. [Quick, do it now while you can! Oh wait. Tennessee's a right-to-work state; you didn't need an excuse.] Well then, it must be all those tourist industry businesses that will appreciate the great publicity this will bring to the state: Tennessee! The last bastion of LBGT discrimination! Oh. Hmm. That’s not quite it.

Here’s my main point: Rep. Casada, don’t you dare wrap this legislation in the banner of protecting small business. I own a small business…three employees, including me. How dare you suggest that my business cannot succeed without the ability to treat others unfairly? How dare you suggest that morality indicates we need the freedom to treat others unfairly? And if you want to make it about religious freedom, well, I’m fine with that. Just show me the person Jesus would discriminate against, and we’ll start there.

Goodness knows I’m not perfect. I don’t pretend to have a full understanding of Christianity. But I cannot abide my own representative state government purporting to assist me by allowing businesses to discriminate.

If you’re seeing this on my blog, learn more about the photo taken by Flickr user mtsofan here.

I can’t stop thinking about some recent Thomas Friedman columns I’ve read, like this one. And I grow increasingly concerned that we’re arguing about the wrong things around here.

I think we’re fiddling while Rome is burning. I think we are not doing anything about the way-too-large percentage of Americans who aren’t even graduating from high school. And never mind a diploma — some recent literacy statistics indicate that more than 20% of Americans have real functional literacy problems.

It’s a matter of national security and prosperity that we fix this. We cannot afford to carry up to 1/4 of our population on everyone else’s back and expect to maintain our competitiveness or to continue to innovate our technology.

Neither can we continue to blame parents, families, teachers or students for the failure of this percentage of the population to attain a basic level of education. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It’s not working the way we’re doing it now. We have to do something different.*

We have to spend some real resources on dramatically improving our educational system. We can’t afford to let anyone else fall behind what seems to me to be a low standard in the first place. Honestly, I can’t figure out how the current high school diploma qualifies you to do a whole lot. Don’t all jobs beyond running a cash register require some kind of additional training, if not college? I think we’re really woefully lacking in technical training and literacy around here. We’re not giving students the math and science they need, the computer technical literacy that progress requires. We are not training our citizens to lead. We cannot allow people to fail any longer. On the left side of the aisle, people like to blame circumstances for educational problems….poverty, for instance. On the right, they’re more likely to blame the individual, the schools and the parents. I reject all of that. I want to hear people saying, it doesn’t matter why you haven’t succeeded before, but it’s our job to help you get there, Susie Student and Larry Learner.

I tend to think a lot about literacy and computer skills because I’m in that industry. But honestly, I think the energy issues we’re facing are just as critical. We have to be serious about creating sustainable energy sources that can power an ongoing technology revolution. It’s going to require a more educated citizenry and a government that supports research and investment in innovation.

We can all see what we’re doing instead. If you want to spend your time bickering about health care or Social Security or earmarks, well, I guess you can go ahead. But I think you’re missing the point. We have to change the game, because shuffling the pieces on the existing board leaves us losers. “Fixing” health care doesn’t fix the bigger problems. And dramatically cutting government spending may warm the hearts of fiscal conservatives, but it’s knee-jerk, not well-planned.

*Please don’t misunderstand. I am not intending to criticize anyone in the education field. I think our problem is much higher up the food chain. We’ve thrown scraps at educators for decades and blamed them for failing to produce a feast. We have to dramatically change the way we as a country prioritize education.

Photo credit: Truthout.org

I’m mystified at the news this week out of Washington. [OK, it's not the first time.]

There’s been all these news stories about whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, and if so, which ones, and for how long.

My biases up front:

• I vote Democratic most of the time.
• I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.
• I own a small business.
• And I strongly believe in a progressive tax system. [That's one where the tax rates increase on higher incomes.]

A quick primer on the Bush tax cuts:
Enacted in two batches in 2001 and 2003, these tax changes touched a lot of pieces/parts of the tax code, but there are several areas you hear about because they affect great numbers of people:

• An estate tax cut, including no estate tax at all for people who die in 2010 [Before the cuts, and starting again 1/1/2011, estates over $1 million are taxed at 55%. Of course, with real estate devaluation in the past couple of years, a lot fewer middle class people may have to worry about this in the near future.]
  What’s likely to happen here: Some kind of estate tax fix seems likely, pushing down the rate and pushing up the exemption level. That will protect a lot of family farms, in particular, some of which used to suffer under the old rules.
• Small-business expensing — allowing small businesses to subtract many capital expenses from their income in the year they make the purchase, thus reducing their income tax that year. This year, small business can expense up to $135,000, but as of Jan. 1, that amount drops to $25,000.
  What I think will happen: The small-business expensing provision has never been slated to last longer than 2 years….since it was passed 7 years ago. So I’ll be shocked if this isn’t extended in some fashion for 2011.
• Income tax rate reductions on all brackets
  What I think will happen: No real guess, but I think the lower tax brackets are going to get extended on lower incomes.

Now for the crazy part
This is the part I don’t understand. Many on the right want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and portray those on the left as if they’re unfriendly to small business because many of them want to allow the highest brackets, for those making upwards of $250,000 a year, jump back to their earlier rates.

The argument goes like this: When you talk about taxpayers making more than $250,000, you also catch a lot of small-business owners in the fold who are structured to pay business and personal taxes on one return. And increasing their tax rate costs the business money, and therefore could harm job creation.

At that point, the right and the left get into this lengthy, esoteric discussion about supply- and demand-side economics.

All of which is pointless.

If we want to create jobs, let’s just give employers a tax credit for every employee on the payroll. Don’t worry about the personal income tax rate [or do whatever you want with it]. It’s not tightly related to jobs.

Also, let’s please not act like this is a burdensome issue for many of the people we’re talking about. What will happen if Congress doesn’t act on income tax rates before 2011: People making just south of $400,000 a year will pay 39.6% on the next dollar, instead of 36%. A greater “middle-class” consequence: People making around $200,000 will pay 36% instead of 33% on the next dollar. [There are some significant consequences for the poor and true middle class, but again, I think that will be fixed.]

So, the real personal economic impact is going to be on truly wealthy people, or on some small business owners, whose income may look artificially high due to their personal and business taxes being on one return. Let’s just separate those issues by giving people who actually create jobs an incentive, and stopping the free tax ride that people who are wealthy but not creating jobs are taking at the potential expense of small business.

Photo by David Reber’s Hammer Photography.

I am not big on black and white. I have my own preferences, but I’m happy for you to go your way. Even when I disagree — a lot — with someone, I lean really libertarian. Let’s just say I’m a ginormous fan of the Bill of Rights. When I was growing up, the Jackson Sun printed the quote usually attributed to Voltaire [but actually a quote from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing in a book about Voltaire] in its opinion section: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I think that sentiment is a bedrock of a free society. I’ll defend the right of anyone to say practically anything, and to do most things to express themselves. Flag-burning. Klan marches. Even burning the Koran.

And yet.

I have thought about these kinds of hateful actions for most of my life. Maybe it’s having grown up in the then-recently-desegregated South: The presence of hate and evil have always seemed nearby to me. They are as much a part of the human condition as joy and laughter, and I’ve seen them up close more often than I’d like.

I think much of the hate in the world is inspired by fear. And for much of my life, I have tried hard to be tolerant of that hate, and of the fear that festers it. I have tried to believe that if only the haters could understand, they would not hate. That hate was a failure of education, of information, of opportunity. That the way to end hate was to teach.

And over the past two or three years, I have come to the end of that tolerance.

I can no longer be tolerant of people who incite fear and hatred with inflammatory half-truths.

I can no longer be tolerant of those who turn away from seeing the humanity in others.

I can no longer be tolerant of people who cling to ignorance to feed their fear when the truth lies obvious in front of them.

I can no longer be tolerant of Americans who wave their religion as a shield before them and seek to deny others the same privilege.

It’s taken a long time, but the black and white are obvious to me at last.

While you’ve got the right to burn the Koran, it’s not the right thing to do.

You’ve got the right to blame “Islam” for 9/11. But you’re wrong to do it.

You’ve got the right to somehow think a Muslim community center in New York is offensive, but you’re wrong.

I think the best we can say about these kinds of attitudes displayed by some Americans recently is that ironically, they’re mirrored by similar attitudes in some parts of the Muslim world.

And those attitudes are just as wrong.

It’s wrong to subjugate women. It’s wrong to deny freedom of religion. It’s wrong to support a stratified society that doesn’t offer opportunity to all. And for those few terrorists out there, it’s wrong to use suicide bombers to make your point.

But we aren’t going to win that battle by burning a Koran. The Koran isn’t anyone’s enemy. Fear is the enemy. Hatred is the enemy. Evil is the enemy. None of these lie in the Koran.

They lie in the hearts of people who are unwilling to trust, unwilling to learn, unwilling to embrace the other. I think that’s a normal human response — the fear — but dammit, we’ve got to learn how to get beyond it. As long as America is tolerant of our own citizens who display intolerance as deep as that that we abhor in our enemies, the terrorists, we are no better than they.

I still believe we can be better. And I’m willing for you to point out the log in my own eye….because I see the speck of intolerance in too many of your eyes. And it’s killing us every day. Your intolerance is killing trust in America. Your intolerance is killing our troops on the ground. It’s killing our hope for a better way.

I cannot be tolerant of that any longer.

Creative Commons photo by Michelle Brea.