Red, Brown & Blue

For the People: A Little White Lie.

A new basketball league is being formed that will only be open to men “that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race”.  That’s right – basketball for white boys.  This was reported in the January 19th edition of the Augusta Chronicle, and picked up a day later by numerous outlets including Yahoo! Sports and the Huffington Post.  The story was met with audience responses that were shocked at the blatant racism and anachronistic attitude.

How could anyone living in 2010 truly believe that this would be acceptable?  It took only a few minutes of thought to answer my own question – no one.  No one living in 2010 would believe that an all-white sports league would be acceptable.

I think the whole thing is a lie.

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Be a Force of Nature. Help Heal Haiti.

Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. Haiti’s worst earthquake in over 200 years has taken the lives of tens of thousands and threatens millions more in the aftermath. Out of the darkness of the rubble there must come light.

The forces of nature have devastated the people of Haiti. It is up to us to react and respond.

As Haiti suffers its worst earthquake in over two centuries, it brings out the best in America. Thousands of people are flying into action – from relief workers to the military, from our current President to former ones, from celebrities to average citizens – seeking ways to help.

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Greed Divides, but Will it Conquer?

Forget which political party is winning these days. Partisanship may well be a distraction for what’s really going on beneath the table, where the consistent victor is “greed.”

“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko giddily extolled in the movie “Wall Street,” capturing the hubris of the 80’s and earning Michael Douglas the coveted Academy Award.

But as greed threatens to consume American ideals, we must ask ourselves: Can “good” stage a comeback to beat greed? Where’s Charlie Sheen when you need him? Can we turn back the clock and give him an award too?

Speaking of the past, the Founding Fathers incorporated a healthy measure of realism in their designs for our system of governance, cognizant that if our politics could align the good of the country with the self-interests of individuals a true win-win would be generated.

To that point, James Madison wrote in 1788: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”

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For the People: They’re Coming For You.

You’re alone.  It’s late and it’s dark and the streetlights are not quite doing their job. Something, you’re not sure what, doesn’t feel right.  Looking back over your shoulder, you see the shift of shadows and the movement of the bushes that might just be the breeze.  But, it might not.

The best thing to do is get somewhere safe, quickly.  You turn the collar up on your coat and push your hands deep into your pockets and walk as fast as you can without appearing scared.  You are scared.  There is no denying that.  But the last thing you want is to show it.  You don’t understand how the city streets could look so empty and you wonder just how late it really is.  Did time get away from you?  You pull your cell phone from your pocket and your trembling hands fumble it to the ground, where your fast-moving feet deliver a swift kick that sends it spinning under a dumpster.  You look back.  Now you see them.

They’re coming for you.

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Why the boycott in National Marriage Boycott?

I just signed the “National Marriage Boycott” pledge. A group of students at Stanford University began this movement with the simple idea that until everybody has the right to marry whomever they chose, the students will choose to not get married. I too, feel that equal rights should be just that – equal rights. At the National Marriage Boycott website, you can offer your support by signing the petition, creating a profile, and ordering their “equality ring”. I spoke with the president of the organization and she told me one of the biggest obstacles they are running into is getting people to sign the petition not because people don’t want equality for the LGBT community and everyone, but because the petition has the term “boycott” in the title. She asked me what significance I thought the word boycott might have in people’s unwillingness to sign the pledge. Her question really made me stop and think about the word boycott and people’s association with it. Many people have issue with the marriage boycott because they have issues with same-sex marriage, whether they be personal or religious. Others are on the fence on whether they want to support, resist, or take no part in change. But what is it about boycott stopping those who otherwise would be supporters of the cause?

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