LETTER: What happened to the moral code that once defined U.S.?

To Ozaukee Press

From the moment I was baptized Lutheran, my parents had a habit of joining the nearest Protestant church wherever we relocated. So, by the time I graduated from high school as a confirmed Congregationalist I had already been, at different times, a Methodist, a Presbyterian and a Baptist. After that I took a fairly long hiatus before eventually joining a synagogue out of respect for my wife and children and my Jewish relatives.

I’m sure there were some differences in the scriptural teachings and the Sunday and Saturday services along the way, but looking back I can’t recall any significant differences in the fundamental moral and ethical teachings from church to church to temple; or from pastor, to reverend to rabbi.

They all preached pretty much the same commandments along with the golden rule and the difference between truth and lies, right and wrong and good and evil. And always along the way there was a common emphasis on human kindness and compassion and love.

And those basic values, along with love of country, were repeated and reinforced again and again in the Boy Scouts and public schools and colleges and the military. And these shared fundamental beliefs were understood to be the foundation of a moral and righteous and patriotic American upbringing. And so it has been for 250 years. Until now.

Over the past decade Donald Trump has ripped open a festering sore in the American body politic. He has succeeded, through an ever increasing harangue of lies and treachery, to awaken the worst instincts of human nature in a large segment of vulnerable Americans.

To his true believers, Trump has managed to bury truth itself under a mountain of lies. What is transparently wrong has become right, and what we all once recognized to be cruel and inhumane has become commonplace and acceptable. To live in Trump world we must accept that good is now evil and evil good.

In light of the brutality and cruelty and cold-blooded murders in Minnesota, the most recent edition of The National Catholic Reporter argues: “Catholics must decide if they serve Donald Trump or the Gospel.”

It should not be surprising to any of us that well over 100 of the people arrested and detained in the past few days in Minneapolis were clergy members. They were there from every corner of our country and every religious denomination in the U.S.; and they were standing up for all of us against the forces of evil.

Donald Harvey

Port Washington