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As A Southerner Born After The Epic Events Of The Civil Rights Movement, I've Always Wondered How On Earth People Of Good Will Could Have Conceivably Lived With Jim Crow - With The Daily Degradations, The Lynchings In Plain Sight, And, As The Movement Gathered Force, With The Fire Hoses And The Police Dogs And The Billy Clubs.

-Jon Meacham

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As A Southerner Born

Jon Meacham

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As A Southerner Born After The Epic Events Of The Civil Rights Movement, I've Always Wondered How On Earth People Of Good Will Could Have Conceivably Lived With Jim Crow - With The Daily Degradations, The Lynchings In Plain Sight, And, As The Movement Gathered Force, With The Fire Hoses And The Police Dogs And The Billy Clubs.

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Only The Most Unapologetic Biblical Fundamentalists, For Instance, Take Every Biblical Injunction Literally. If We All Took All Scripture At The Same Level Of Authority, Then We Would Be More Open To Slavery, To The Subjugation Of Women, To Wider Use Of Stoning. Jesus Himself Spoke Out Frequently Against Divorce In The Strongest Of Terms.

I Believe History Will Come To View 9/11 As An Event On Par With November 22, 1963, The Date On Which John F. Kennedy Was Murdered, Cutting Short A Presidency That Was Growing Ever More Promising. Dreams Died That Day In Dallas; It Is Easy To Imagine The 1960s Turning Out Rather Differently Had President Kennedy Lived.

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The Traditional Religious Right's Failure To Restore Public-school Prayer Or Pass An Antiabortion Constitutional Amendment Has Likely Helped Fuel The Spread Of The More Extreme Dominionist School.

We Are Exceptional Not Because Of Who We Are But Because Of What We Do And How We Put The Ideals Of Human Dignity, Individual Freedom, And Liberty Under Law Into Action.

If A Person Is Homosexual By Nature - That Is, If One's Sexuality Is As Intrinsic A Part Of One's Identity As Gender Or Skin Color - Then Society Can No More Deny A Gay Person Access To The Secular Rights And Religious Sacraments Because Of His Homosexuality Than It Can Reinstate Jim Crow.

The Problem For Those Who Assert Biblical Authority In Support Of Traditional Definitions Of Marriage Is That One Could, With Equal Validity, Assert That The Lending Of Money Or Certain Kinds Of Haircuts Are Forbidden By God, Or That Slavery And The Subjugation Of Women Are Authorized By The Lord.

Without Education, We Are Weaker Economically. Without Economic Power, We Are Weaker In Terms Of National Security. No Great Military Power Has Ever Remained So Without Great Economic Power.

National Security

In The Closed Circle Of The War Cabinet, Pounded By Terrible Report After Terrible Report, There Had Been Uncertainty About Whether He Could Fend Off The Drift To Exploring A Deal With Hitler. The Determination Of The Larger Group Trumped The Tentativeness Of The Smaller, And Churchill Fulfilled His Role As Leader By Disentangling Himself From Defeatism--one Of His Singular Achievements At The End Of May 1940.

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In The Fullness Of Time, I Suspect That Bigotry Against Homosexuals Will Seem As Repugnant As Racial Prejudice Does Today. Or So One Hopes.

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As A Southerner Born After The Epic Events Of The Civil Rights Movement, I've Always Wondered How On Earth People Of Good Will Could Have Conceivably Lived With Jim Crow - With The Daily Degradations, The Lynchings In Plain Sight, And, As The Movement Gathered Force, With The Fire Hoses And The Police Dogs And The Billy Clubs.

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In America, Now, Let Us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, Wiccan, Whatever - Fight Nativism With The Same Strength And Conviction That We Fight Terrorism. My Faith Calls On Its Followers To Love One's Enemies. A Tall Order, That - Perhaps The Tallest Of All.

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