To the Editor:
Some think we should follow Arizona's horrible example. They call undocumented immigrants "criminals." If they loved these neighbors enough to ask why they come, they would learn that they come because our nation's free trade laws undercut their subsistence farm market prices so they lost their farms and can't get jobs. Their families would starve to death much before the seven-year waiting period needed to come legally.
God is Love. God created humans in Her/His own image and created the universe to sustain all of us while we increase and multiply and learn to love each other to the best of our limited human ability. God loves each of us more than we can even imagine.
Jesus showed us that the way to happiness is to freely choose to love and serve God and all of our neighbors. He cautioned us to be very careful so that we don't follow blind leaders.
Years ago, my curiosity was aroused as I watched Republican conventions on TV. I couldn't understand how their judgmental hatred of those who don't agree with them fit in with their "values" and "pro-life" rhetoric. I wrote a letter to the editor to ask conservatives to list those values. Two gentlemen answered. In the private correspondence that followed, neither named any of their conservative values. They just tore into liberals.
So, I read several books by conservatives. I discovered that if conservative leaders explained their un-Christian values to you and me, we wouldn't support them. Example; on page 382 of Russell Kirk's "Conservative Mind", it says, "To the civilized man the rights of property are more important than the right to life."
The very few who call the shots believe that God created you and me to deliver "their" wealth to God's "special ones" (them) so they can live happily in splendor.
That isn't love of God and neighbor. They're unhappy. If you blindly accept their blind faith, your support keeps them in power. Your support prevents them from discovering that Love, not greed, is the way to happiness. How sad.
Lorraine Redig
Winona
Opinion
Letter: God is love - God loves Hispanics, too
Originally published in the May 28, 2010, print edition.
- Opinion
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Land Minds: 2011 — A year in preview
Any idiot can tell you what’s ALREADY happened. It takes a different kind of idiot entirely to claim he’ll tell you what WILL happen. On that note, here’s what we all have to look forward to in 2011…
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Land Minds: Dennis helped others get better
The Land lost a family member Memorial Day weekend. Dennis John Kelly, writer of the "Grain Angles" column for 15 years, lost a short, but valiant battle with pancreatic cancer.
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Farm and Food File: Trade talks stuck in past
The surest way to confirm if anyone in Washington, D.C. is telling you the truth about trade is to watch their lips: if they move, they're stretching the blanket one way or the other.
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Farm and Food File: June was cultivator month; time for Uncle Honey show
I don't know where the term originated but I do know two things about laying-by corn. First, it never meant the weeds laid down; Dad always followed the last cultivator pass with a 2,4-D soaking a week or so later.
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Letter: Coveting thy neighbor's stuff
Letter: Coveting thy neighbor's stuff
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Commentary: HSUS - wolves in sheep's clothing
In 2008, Dan Mathews, vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said, "when you consider any movement for social change, it's really got to be seen as a generational one.
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Commentary: Species safe even if world warms
Biologists are again predicting massive species losses as the world warms. But where are the corpses?
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Land Minds: A lot to think about this spring
What a spring and kudos to you Minnesota farmers. I doubt if you ever have planted this much crop this early and this easily. There just weren't any serious challenges from Mother Nature.
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Farm and Food File: Alabama fried chicken - antitrust chief taking your calls
In a morning session of the May 21 U.S. Department of Justice-Department of Agriculture workshop on ag and antitrust enforcement, Alabama poultry grower Garry Staples told officials he expected "retaliation" from the firm he grows chickens for because of his participation in that event's discussion of poultry contracts.
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Farm and Food File: Suppose you support farm bill reform; it could be cheaper
Suppose the House ag committee asks you to come to Washington to offer your ideas on how to improve the farm bill for its 2012 update.
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