Beautiful baby boy

My brother's wife gave birth to her first baby. I am an uncle of a baby so beautiful, and yet so similar in features to my gnarly-looking brother. She carried him for nine months, then her water broke on Super Tuesday. It was eight in the morning and the first thing she said was "We have to vote." My brother laughed and took her to the hospital. He then went to cast his vote for Barack Obama.
He labored for over twelve hours to bring that boy into the world. He's a little thing. But he's got big hands, and big feet. Big for a baby. He curls up into the size of a football, and means more to us than winning the Super Bowl.
He is helpless, he is wonderful. She will nurse him and coo him to bed for months. They will change countless diapers and feed him spoonful by spoonful, until he grows strong enough to feed himself. They will cheer and laugh when he struggles to take his first steps. They will teach him everything they know, and he will ask questions upon questions, and they will remember what it felt like to be curious.
He will live, what a beautiful thing life is. Holding that baby in my arms made me realize how terrible the cost, how awful the our state, that we can do such horrible things to each other.
Every murder, every rape, every action taken that casts another deeper into poverty, every war that throws away countless of lives in an endless game of chess none of us has a right to play. We are all still children, but some of us get so good at pretending that we think we have the right to meddle in someone else's life. We pretend that we're better. Imagine a child, who puts on make up for the first time, smearing red lipstick halfway across her cheeks, and dabbing eyeshadow around her eyes and across her forehead. Imagine her dressing up in mommies clothes, and feeling so important. Feeling rich, dignified, and more important than anyone else. That is us. We are all children, pretending our green pieces of paper mean something. Pretending that numbers are more important than people.
Babies have been grabbed by their feet and swung into walls, their heads bursting open and their life bleeding out. Who could kill a baby? When does it become acceptable to kill a man?
I do not fear terrorists. Perfect love casts away all fear. I love my enemy. I pity him who kills. What a worse fate than those who die. What a bitter wound it must make on the soul. What a frightful feeling to lose all feeling, to feel no pity in murder.
America is great. America is strong. As they say in Hawaii, "ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono," meaning, "the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness." America is great when it is good. When we do not good we need to repent.
Repent.
We need to repent of torture. We need to repent of pride. We need to extend the God-given, inalienable rights set forth in the constitution to all men, regardless of citizenship, race, or creed. When we fail to do so we are hypocrites, silly children playing pretend, and rebelling against God who gave them those rights.
Torture is wrong. Perhaps if we were to catch "the bad guy" we might feel justified in roughing him up a bit. Putting a boot up his ass for all the pain and trouble he's caused. But torture isn't used to punish the bad guy. It's used to discover if someone is a bad guy. It's used in times of uncertainty. And because the torturer doesn't have all of the information, it's likely that he's torturing an innocent. And torture can pull confessions like teeth from the innocent. Torture made hundreds confess to being a witch.
Terrorism is the new witch hunt. The new red scare. The new monster under the bed.
Wake up children. It's time to get up. Pretend time is over. A new morning dawns. One of hope. One of America united. First with each other, and then with the world.