James Craig Anderson

(This Weeks Blog is A Personal Commentary)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

James Craig Anderson was murdered on June 26^th, 2011.

His crime was exactly the same as that of James Byrd of Jaspar, Texas back in 1998 and the method of execution was the same – a truck was used to assassinate them both; James Craig Anderson was intentionally driven over by one, James Byrd was intentionally  dragged behind one, tethered to it by a chain.

Their executioners imposed these sentences of death arbitrarily and without a foundation of any legal precept. The names of the killers will not reprinted here, for to give these individuals any further acknowledgement would serve only to embolden those who may come after them.

We as a nation have a responsibility and culpability in these two killings and the far too many similar others that occur throughout this nation.

The specifics of the alleged crimes of James Craig Anderson and James Byrd may vary slightly in nature to others perpetrated around the nation, but in these instances, herein were their alleged societal transgressions.

They were both black.

Their murderers were white, and they felt that gave them sufficient cause to terminate the lives of two fellow citizens, two fellow Americans, a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal.

This is not a ranting diatribe about race; such dissertations are more often than not vapid and pointless requests for universal love and peace; desirable goals to be sure, but rather unobtainable within the current course of human endeavors.

At this point in history, anybody inherently stupid enough to automatically choose hatred for somebody based solely upon differentiations of pigmentation are most probably lost to society and should be outright shunned by society as a whole once their views are given voice. Unless they are acted upon, however, government at any level should not intercede; official intervention within the scope of mere thought is too terrible to contemplate. We must be wary on acting against those whose IDEAS we disagree with; it will shortly be OUR ideas that are under assault.

The real issue here, that our politicians fail to give voice to and which the electorate at large have chosen to ignore, is the fact that ignorance needs only passive avoidance to flourish. Ignorance is the real enemy that must be confronted; an educated mind is not a mind of hatred. Ignorance will breed fear, and fear is the emotion that gets acted upon; be afraid of the unknown and you will invariably attack it. The ability to ask questions about the unknown will automatically disarm it; shed the light of intelligence on ignorance and it will whither and die.

The need for education in all its incarnations must be fostered at the workplace, in our schools, in our communities at large, at our dinner tables. The freest people history has ever known most make freedom the verb it needs to be; not as a dismissive catchphrase word used to simulate patriotism. If we do not keep the body politic healthy by continually educating its mind, we shall perish from the earth.

No American citizen should ever be murderd again out of fear borne by the ignorance of hate.

It must stop.

Today.

The decision is quite literally yours.

May we all make the right one.