Absolutely Scary

I drove my son and two of his friends home from tennis this afternoon. We passed an Obama sign in someone's yard, and one of these friends enlightened us all in this way: he said that we shouldn't vote for Obama, because "'Barack Obama' is a Muslim name," and "Muslims fly airplanes into buildings."

I can't even tell you how angry, and sad, and anxious this made me. Forget about the Muslim name part, that's just irrelevant. Here's a kid who doesn't even know what Islam is, or how it's different from Christianity (his own religion -- surprised?), or, more importantly, how it's the same. When I mentioned that he should maybe learn a little bit more about the world before he talked like that, he said he didn't want to know. He said the world is a terrible place, and he didn't need to know anything about it.

Thirteen or fourteen years old, this kid, and already so filled up with hate, and so unbelievably ignorant. I asked him where he got all this stuff, and he said, "my family." Can you imagine? What kind of contribution is this dunce going to make to our civilization? How far will ignorance, xenophobia, and hate get us as we try to help our neighbors around the world and be good stewards of the only planet we've got (whatever your superstitions might be)? His family ought to be ashamed of themselves. Or maybe I'm ashamed enough for all of them. We should all be.