Quote:February 26
President Bush continues to use rhetoric such as evil and evildoers in his talks. He calls Saddam Hussein an evil man. I don't believe people are evil. People are inherently good and innocent when they are born. We may make mistakes, commit cruelties, or do evil things, but these do not define us or make up who we are. I think we should all try to understand each other and approach others with an attitude of reverence rather than judgment. Martin Luther King Jr. said \"violence is the voice of the unheard.\" We must attack the problem, not the people. People respond to their circumstances. Poverty, classism, racism lead to violence. Why? Because violence and crime are signs that something needs fixing in a society or in a person's environment. Violence is never an appropriate response to violence. It fixes no problems. Winning a war will not change people's hearts and minds. It will leave us with a lot of dead bodies, ruined lands, crushed economies, and the same set of problems we had when we started. We need to embrace life, not destroy it. We need to hear the unheard. (Does this sound like a sermon?) I just feel so strongly that all of this talk about evil does not get us anywhere. We need to get out of attack mode and start listening more. This doesn't mean we let people drop bombs on us. But we must ask ourselves why does someone want to drop a bomb on us? When we can answer that question, we'll know what problem we need to address.