Donald Trump is a terrible leader his incendiary rhetoric is stirring up the entire nation when his job is to call for healing- God Bless Erika Kirk

Editorial echo published by the Baltimore Sun newspaper:

If the Charlie Kirk memorial last Sunday in Arizona was a test of faith — if all those in assembly wanted to demonstrate their support for the slain conservative activist, for his religious beliefs he held, for the causes he espoused and for his grieving family — then it was mission accomplished. 

HELLO❗With one notable exception❗ 💥When the final speaker took the podium to eulogize the 31-year-old head of Turning Point USA and father of two young children, the man so many before him had praised for his commitment to his family and his Christian faith, that individual was clear and unambiguous in his views on forgiveness and redemption and second chances.

He was having none of it.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first fill with hate.

“He did not hate his opponents,” Donald Trump said of Kirk. “He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them. 🙄I’m sorry.”😕😠

Hate, as Captain Ahab discovered in Moby Dick, is ruinous. It metastasizes like cancer, reproducing itself at warp speed. And to hear Trump embrace it, even as thousands prayed, sang to Christian contemporary music and spoke of better days ahead at the combination religious service and political rally, was deeply disappointing. Not entirely surprising, but disappointing nonetheless.
What a contrast to Kirk’s widow. Erika Kirk 😢echoed Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in expressing forgiveness, not hate, for her husband’s assassin. Tearful, sometimes shaking and looking upward as if to meet her late husband’s gaze from heaven, she spoke with the magnanimous spirit of Jesus in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

It was jarring, appalling and churlishly rude (add "sinful") that Trump would reject that spirit of the moment — and the will of the Kirks — in celebrating hate. So unabashedly. So myopically. 

So narcissistically. Trump fulminated at Charlie’s funeral. Given this remarkable opportunity to bind the nation’s wounds, as a certain president once sought to do, he instead spoke of hate.

Such hatred is unbefitting of anyone. It is especially unbefitting for a president who is supposed to be a role model for the country.

Do many of Trump’s opponents reciprocate his hate? Absolutely, but that is no excuse. President Abraham Lincoln was reviled unmercifully by many during the Civil War. Yet in his second inaugural address, the great man preached, “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Hate engendered the climate that provoked Kirk’s assassin. Continuing down that path risks more of the same. 

Where is the adult in the living room who will tell Trump, “No,” even with the high risk of provoking retribution❓ No nation can survive without courage. It occupies the summit of virtues because it makes all others possible.

We strongly urge Donald Trump to retract his embrace of hate. His stated ambition is to surpass George Washington as the greatest U.S. president. He can start by following Washington’s admonition at the constitutional convention: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest may repair.” Let us at least attempt to have a civil conversation about our disagreements — or at least not boast about our hatred for each other.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. 

Leadership in New Zealand - Thank you Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

"What has happened in Christchurch is an extraordinary act of unprecedented violence. It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities – New Zealand is their home – they are us." Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

An editorial published in the Middletown Press, a Connecticut newspaper and The Chicago Tribune.

From an American perspective, New Zealand is half way around the Earth. But that perceived isolation doesn’t equal protection from evil. As the world saw in Christchurch, evil can come from anywhere and descend on anyone. 

Moreover, the internet can speed messages of hate.

On Friday March 15, at least one mad gunman attacked two mosques in Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island, killing several dozen people and wounding dozens more. It was afternoon on the day of prayer for Muslims.

The carnage was purposeful and heinously livestreamed on Facebook. This was an abominable act of violence, designed to be seen and shared. A shooter, apparently using a helmet camera, led viewers on his rampage.

The design of the crime is all too recognizable.

• It is Pittsburgh, where a gunman killed 11 people in a synagogue.
• It is a South Texas church, where a murderer killed 26 people.
• It is a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., where the death toll was six.

It is terrorism carried out against a targeted group of victims at their most peaceful and thus vulnerable: people at prayer. 
One can speculate about a possible motive — in this case, white nationalist rage — but logic fails to justify such twisted acts.

New Zealand, like the United States, is a multicultural nation where Muslims are assimilated contributors to society. But like other groups, including Jewish people, Muslims are a highly visible minority, owing to their cultural identity and pattern of worship.

One aspect of this crime that gained immediate attention was the livestream. Early evidence suggested the internet also played a role in fomenting the gunman’s hateful ideology. 

The dark corners of cyberspace are full of such evil lunacy.

All kinds of ideas, good and evil, go viral through social media. Societies can’t outlaw hate. Government cannot regulate thought or ban words. In the United States, the First Amendment doesn’t take sides. Short of explicit threats, free speech must be free, which limits the ability of lawmakers to prevent eruptions of hate like the one in New Zealand.

But that doesn’t mean civilized societies are powerless.  (MaineWriter- Common sense regulations can be implemented without interfering with First Amendment or Second Amendment freedoms.)

Gatekeepers such as Facebook and other social media purveyors do have a responsibility to patrol and regulate their own venues. And all of us have a responsibility to eradicate racial supremacy and other vile forms of bigotry.

Two messages come at us from faraway New Zealand. (a) First is the need to call out the hatred of the mass “them,” no matter who “they” may be; and (2) teach tolerance and embrace the differences that make people of all backgrounds unique and equal.

If all of us listen, those messages have a chance of squelching these senseless acts.

This editorial is from the Chicago Tribune.

Echos on Charlottesville racism from Tulsa World Oklahoma

Echoes: My blogs, a series highlighting opinions found in randomly picked newspapers

#1:  Trump failed in moral leadership by Al Langer, Tulsa

I found President Trump’s initial response to the violence that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, very disappointing.

Especially galling was his statement that there were fine people on both sides. There are no fine people among the KKK, neo-Nazis and racists. They hate blacks, Jews and other minorities.

Hate is what they know best. This was the time for moral leadership, which in this case was sorely lacking.

#2 Hate: What is really bothering us? by Martha S. Kuzilik, Jenks

Hate is the ugliest word and emotion in our vocabulary, yet it has taken hold of this country, state and cities and does not appear to be letting up at all.  It is past time that we work together to assure that all lives matter, regardless of color or religion.

#3 Racists must be called out- by F.L. Dunn III, Tulsa*

...hatred based upon racial bigotry or prejudice becomes a political issue when politicians fail to confront fellow politicians for their failures to condemn bigotry and prejudice.

Acknowledging that our country was founded upon principles directly in conflict with racist belief or that such a belief is immoral is not enough. It must be stated unequivocally that race superiority does not exist, nor should it exist as a concept.

No race is superior to another. A politician, who gives lip-service to the notion that people or groups who harbor bigotry are terrible people, but who then states that there are “very fine people on both sides” of a dispute has revealed his true racist sentiments. “Very fine people” do not believe in race superiority.

A politician who ignores the actions or words of another politician by failing to openly condemn that individual tacitly endorses that belief.

Evil must be identified and condemned, not coddled by inaction. ....failure to condemn President Trump by name for his actions and words regarding the Charlottesville incident (of racial violence) allows the concept of race superiority to go undenounced, for what it is: a pernicious evil concept that persists.

No “national conversation” will remove this evil from society. 

The only conversation that will help is for individuals who harbor such belief to have a conversation with themselves and acknowledge their racism and vow to overcome it by prayer or by self-awareness.

*Editor’s note: Dunn is former first assistant to the Tulsa County district attorney and former first assistant to the United States Attorney, Northern District of Oklahoma.