Never take counsel of your fears

Fear has never been a good advisor, neither in our personal lives nor in our society.

-Angela Merkel

Peter Salem was a Muslim who fought at Bunker Hill at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He was killed in action. Muslim/Americans have fought in each and every major war of this nation including the Civil War, both world wars, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. 3,500 have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. Many Muslim gravesites are at Arlington. They proudly served and many have made the supreme sacrifice.

So, when I hear Donald Trump say Muslims should be excluded from entering this county, my heart sinks.

We have a very diverse population. We have a multiplicity of ideas and values. We have freedom to express those values and there is some commonality in the values we do hold as a nation. It also makes me angry, since I think we are better than how Trump and many of his co-candidates characterize us. There is a deep, dark underlay in this country of bigotry and xenophobia into which some tap during times of crisis. After the killings in San Bernardino and other places this river of hate has been tapped by many. These are the times we are tested, all of us.

This is not the first time this ugliness has appeared or that river of hatred has been accessed. One of the worst blots on our history was the internment of 127,000 Japanese citizens during World War II, two-thirds of whom were U. S. citizens. Some were from Central Oregon. With a stroke of a pen, Franklin Roosevelt's executive order was quickly carried out, and many had less than 72 hours to dispose of their property and move to one of 10 camps. Well, they didn't even move them to camps at first because they weren't built, so they went to stadiums and warehouses.

What was particularly disheartening for me was the case of Fred Korematsu vs. The United States. In this case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the internment was constitutional. Justice William O. Douglas (whom Time magazine in 1975 called "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court") actually wrote the majority opinion. He considered it among his greatest regrets in later life, but it shows how everyone can get wrapped up in the fear and hysteria during times when they feel threatened.

There are many other examples. There were the anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they were responsible for random explosions and even the assassination of President McKinley. There was the anti-German sentiment during World War I. The list goes on and on, but it is at these times, like we are having now - when our rights and the rights of others are most threatened - that we have to be the most vigilant.

It's easy to get a lump in your throat when they play the National Anthem at a football game. I do. But that is easy patriotism. The hard part is standing by our values and not giving in to the base bigotry that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and others espouse.

Back when he was president Ronald Reagan said: "America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said 'You can go to Japan and live but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France and live, but you will not become a Frenchman. You can go to Germany or Turkey to live but you will not become a German or a Turk.' Then he added: 'Anyone can come to America and be an American.'"

Let us not forget our ideals.

If what I read is correct, ISIS recruits marginalized youth who don't feel connected. What Donald Trump is doing is actually recruiting for ISIS by reinforcing what they hear about this country. We need to work with Muslim leaders to be more aggressive about reaching out to this population. We need to do a better job of intelligence-gathering. We also need to strengthen our visa process and be more careful about who we admit from where - but we cannot shut down an entire religion or race because of a disaffected few.

Religion cannot be the basis of discrimination. Let's remember and be what we stand for.