I have often enough seen people take one fact and magnify it into a brown mountain.
For instance, the criticism of President Barack Obama for shaking the hand of Cuba’s Raul Castro and the backlash against Pope Francis, then the motive-driven equating of both the pope and president with socialists and communists.
I recall it was President Nixon who was first to attempt health-care reform with price controls on Medicare medications, then first to shake a Chinese communist leader’s hand, which opened diplomatic and trade doors in the 1970s. The Chinese leaders have since become cutthroat capitalists, having trade and/or mining agreements with every nation in Africa and South America, and they are now holding more than $1.5 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning we are as dependent on those polluting commies as they are on us.
Pope Francis is keenly aware of why youth are leaving Catholic and other church congregations, and he is trying to lighten his church’s oppressive stance on the rights of women and gays, to bring that church fully into the 21st century and stem the tide of poverty and hunger. Encouraging the wealthy to become more generous is a humanitarian’s outreach, not communist dogma.
What would we gain via an open-door policy with Cuba? Cuba has exported tens of thousands of their now-famous doctors, and has a world-renowned cancer treatment program; their people are among the healthiest on this planet. We could learn much from them.
So, here we are with the godless-commies-or-socialists-behind-every-bush crowd, using their minority megaphone, with few attempts at respectful debate. Will they scuttle our possibility of peace with Iran? Should we tune them out?
This article appears in Jan 16-23, 2014.
