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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
