Is a large part of the seeming lunacy of world leaders due to their being gambling addicts, but the “game” being gambling with people’s lives? It is understandable when those with great power become incapacitated by such power, eventually making stupid blunders when the enormity of the conditions overwhelms their ability to function mentally. There is kind of madness that comes upon such people when circumstances begin spiraling out of control. This is what concerns me about our own leadership, not just the leadership of Iran and North Korea among others. Professionally I am very well qualified to address this issue, but my academic qualifications notwithstanding when it comes to the various forms of addiction gambling is right up there among the worst.

While living in Las Vegas six blocks from the Golden Nugget at the time of the premier for My Friend Irma Goes West I learned I wasn’t cut out to be a gambler. My stepfather at the time, Jim Blaine, was a very popular disk jockey for a Vegas radio station so I had opportunity to meet several celebrities of the era like Spike Jones, Red Skelton, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and the so very beautiful Marie Wilson. My Friend Irma was one of my favorite radio programs, but to see her in person was the thrill of a lifetime. Even at my tender age I was struck by her beauty, like that of a golden-haired angel!

Even as a boy I found Las Vegas an exciting town, and the evening of the premier for the movie a stage had been set up in front of the Golden Nugget, a place with an impressive display of one-million dollars cash in a front window, where the cast for the film was to be introduced. And this was done by Dean Martin with Marie Wilson beside him in a fire-engine red Cadillac convertible driving up the main drag towing Jerry Lewis on roller skates behind the car; a really funny sight to behold.

It was a wonderfully balmy desert evening, and there was quite a large crowd in attendance as Dean parked the car right in front of where I was standing and the three of them ascended to the stage. But my attention was on the beautiful Marie Wilson, dressed in a flowing white evening gown, her long golden hair positively glowing in the stage lights and the reflection from the brightly lit casino.

Dean started by telling a couple of jokes with Jerry being the straight man, and then Dean turned his attention to Marie. Now this stunningly beautiful girl played the quintessential dumb blonde on radio, and hilariously funny in that role. So all of us in the audience thought we knew something of what to expect from her. But to our surprise Dean said “I hear you are quite interested in poetry Marie, do you have a favorite poem?” In that unforgettable girlish voice Marie replied, “Why yes Dean, I do,” to which Dean replied, “Well, do you think you could recite it for us?”

We all waited in eager anticipation as the stunningly beautiful angel Marie took the microphone and in that marvelously girlish voice of an innocent ingénue recited the poem: “Of all the fishies in the sea my favorite is the bass; he climbs up in the seaweed trees and slides down on his… hands and knees.”

The roar of laughter all about me nearly drowned out my own reaction to this beautiful young blonde goddess. As I was later to take stock of the situation I realized I had learned something. You can’t judge a book by its cover, and people, even beautiful girls can disappoint you. All the innocence of believing had been on my part. But I could never enjoy My Friend Irma the same thereafter. The years would pass and eventually I would learn not to expect more of others than I expected of myself. We are all frail human beings, and it is most unfair to expect perfection of any of us.

As to gambling, I had been sent on an errand to a small grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread. There was a young woman ahead of me with a baby in her arms. After paying for her meager purchases among which were some jars of baby food she stopped at a slot machine next to the exit and put the change she had received into the slot. She won nothing and left the store. But something struck me as being wrong with this. I have always been sensitive to the moods of people, and this young woman seemed to be in distress. Was she an unwed mother? Or did she have other concerns wearing her down, making her appear despondent? And if so, why would such a young mother her baby in her arms be putting her change, money I sensed she could not afford to lose into that slot machine? Why would such a young mother with a baby be gambling at all, wouldn’t the money be better spent on things necessary for her and her baby?

Of course, like the girl in Ode to Billy Joe I was only a child. What could I be expected to know of such things? Perhaps, like the girl, more than adults thought I was capable of knowing at the time. But the memory of that young mother with the baby in her arms stayed with me while traveling through a number of “gaming towns” and living in other places like Lake Tahoe, and no matter how often the term “gaming” is used it is still gambling.

I have known several addicted to gambling, and it is a horrible addiction. And what are state lotteries but a diabolical invention to take money from those least able to afford losing it?

While attending St. Joseph’s Military Academy near Jacksonville, Florida one of the really fun events was a “gaming” night where both students and their parents could play various gambling games and win prizes. And like the ubiquitous bingo games in the Roman churches all for a “good cause.”

But I continued to have a problem with seeing people who could ill afford it throwing their money away by gambling. Perhaps a hitherto unknown perverse streak caused me to “get even” on one occasion.

Many of you will recall the scene in The Godfather where the Mafioso is pinning the money to that doll for the church. We were living in Cleveland, Ohio at the time and my brother and I were enrolled in a Catholic school, St. Mary’s. On one occasion the nun who was our teacher showed the class a beautiful angel doll with several ten-dollar bills pinned to it to be raffled off, and we were all given cards with places for twenty names. Chances at the doll were to be sold for ten-cents each.

I found the local bars the best places to do business. We were living at the time in a Polish “ghetto” where everyone was more Catholic than the pope, a place where West Coast Catholics were considered apostates from the one true church. In this environment a kid selling chances in the bars on a raffle for the local church and school was quite acceptable, and in no time I had sold all twenty chances and had the two bucks in dimes in my pocket. Ah, enter the “evil one” to tempt me. I tore up the card and kept the money. And to compound my sin, I told our teacher I had lost the card! First stealing and then lying to a nun to cover the theft! The flames of h--- yawned before me!

To this very day, gentle reader, I do not know why I did such a thing. Was it in retaliation to what I knew was wrong, using children to bring in gambling money for the church coffers at the expense of innocence? Of this I am certain, whatever the motive it wasn’t the money. I was raised better than that, and stealing and lying were not only wrong, they were grievous sins! But on this singular occasion they were not ones I included in my weekly confessional.

The Scripture has it “Will a man rob God?” Sure, men do it all the time. But it never crossed my mind in this instance that I was robbing God; for whatever reason what I had done was retaliation for something a better conscience had told me was wrong with an institution that would use children for the purpose of gambling. And I heartily resented being used in such a way!

Over these many years of living and traveling throughout America I have witnessed this same abuse of children everywhere, children used and abused for the evil men do, especially in the name of religion something being accentuated in Muslim nations where children are not selling chances on a church raffle but learning to hate all non-Muslims, and in too many cases how to kill them! Even by giving their lives in the process with the fairy tale promises of “Paradise” for doing so!

And now with the wars of men killing and maiming children throughout the world, with so many lives being sacrificed to the evil men do everywhere are we at the mercy of lunatics addicted to gambling with people’s lives? I do wonder. When I say this war against Islam must be fought to win or America is lost, that word “win” had better not be in the sense of a game where the leadership is gambling with people’s lives. If so, I will tear up the card and keep the money.

“Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so.” On this date five years ago my daughter Karen was the only one who called me. The horrific Attack on America left us all numb at first, the horrifying scenes unfolding on our TV screens across America and throughout the world too dreadfully shocking, too dumbfounding to our minds and senses to really comprehend! But Karrie called not just because of her concern for me, but because I was the only remaining point of stability in her life, the only one she knew who loved her absolutely unconditionally.

And this was a time when the need to reach out to loved ones was of paramount importance in a world suddenly seeming to have gone mad, and Karrie and I only had each other to reach out to. Had she not called me first, I would have called her. But now my beautiful little girl is gone, and with her went the best part of my life, the very best of the beauty this world will ever afford me, and I have only those thoughts left that find me young, and keep me so.

But only those thoughts of beauty to which Emerson referred find us always young, thoughts not only of love but about an unimaginably immense universe and the stars that speak of such mystery while at the same time speak peace to my soul because they remain the same and unchangeable scene of the heavens to me, nothing of the evil men do can touch the stars and the quail, about a hundred of them, are feeding around my cottage and taking advantage of the water I supply them here in the country as I write, a reminder that some things continue as before, even things like the quail hereabout I have known from childhood, a kindly touch of normalcy in Creation in an otherwise seemingly lunatic world led of lunatics.

We all need such points of stability in our lives, things of beauty that do not change and because they do not change have that characteristic of finding us always young. Of such may be the remembered scent of a field of alfalfa or that of a forest after a refreshing shower that together with the marvelous aroma turns everything immediately as though by magic a brighter shade of green. It may be watching a great old film like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca or a musical like South Pacific, it may a particular kind of music that evokes thoughts of beauty, but those thoughts that always find us young will invariably be about things of beauty else they would never keep us young.

Some find fault with me because I continue to draw from the past in so much of my writing and applying these things I have experienced and learned to the present not seeming to realize those my age are “living history,” replete with the experiences of having lived so much and so long and with a keen awareness of the axiom those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Which is why, of course, during the seven decades of my life I have not known a world at peace, but only the ongoing, seemingly endless conflicts between the nations of the world.

It is tragic in the extreme that whether Republican or Democrat We the People will not be offered a choice of virtuous people for elected office, there will be none who reflect a choice for beauty. The world is now far too dangerous it seems for either truth or beauty to have much of a chance. And neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to commit to a war to win against the enemies of truth and beauty, against the enemies of civilization.

But now the world faces dangers never before known because of nuclear weapons, and barbarians that will doubtless use such weapons against civilized nations in the name of Allah. Columnist Burt Prelutsky reflecting my own writing on the subject today writes: Jihad this! I no longer accept that we are only at war with Islamic fascists or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever the heck we’re calling them this week. I believe that we in the West are at war with Islam, period. I have heard any number of politicians, up to and including President Bush, claim, contrary to all reason and evidence, that Islam is a religion of peace. If you buy that load of malarkey, I’ve got a Brooklyn mosque I’d like to sell you. This is the religion that was founded by the violence-prone Mohammed fourteen hundred years. It was he who established the practice of converting at the point of a sword; a short while ago, two journalists kidnapped by his followers were converted at the barrel of a gun. In 14 centuries, it seems only the technology has changed…

I would ask those who believe any Muslim has a real appreciation of beauty while at the same time being a proponent of this religion of the sword to reconsider. The very ugliness of such a religion that would make women “sub-humans” cannot have any real appreciation of beauty, and contrary to being receptive to those thoughts of beauty that always find one young are thoughts of death and destruction to all who do not bow to their god and glorifies those that commit murder in the name of their unholy god and religion.

Perhaps there really are children of God and children of the Devil, those who appreciate beauty and those that bend every effort to destroy it? Where do the monsters in human guise come from that prey on women and children and foment the wars and other evils men do?

Did God intervene in a Satanic creation red in tooth and claw, in a world given to violence, to wars, death and destruction? Is the “Adam” of Genesis a special creation by a God of beauty?

Humans strange, Neanderthals normal. Humans have twice as many divergent features as Neanderthals. By Charles Q. Choi, from LiveScience.com. Sept 8, 2006. Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Hom(o), we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core." Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not."… "In the broader sweep of human evolution, the more unusual group is not Neanderthals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us, modern humans," Trinkaus said…

There are well qualified scientists who subscribe to a Creation of Intelligent Design and point to Modern Man, the “odd man out” as a special creation of God, and one that would uphold standards of beauty in the face of so much ugliness abounding, this special creation of the Adam accounting for the sudden and otherwise unaccountable beginning of civilization after so many millions of years.

But whether or not, the looming specter of a nuclear Armageddon haunts the world. And whether Republican or Democrat, whether Christian or atheist should this happen who will be left to declare their side was correct and their side “won?”

Going through my mother’s scrapbook containing so many things surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor where she was at the time, it seems only a short time ago to memory this catastrophic event took place. And mom’s scrapbook is a kind of time machine transporting me back to that time still so alive to my memory.

Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor my grandparents tried to contact my mother. But there had been no way for the folks and my mother to communicate since all telephone and radio usage was committed to the military and strictly controlled. America was now at war, and everything in our lives would now revolve around and be subservient to that ugly fact.

Eventually the folks were allowed to send an RCA Radiogram to my mother, but that was not until nine days following the attack, then there were the additional anxious days awaiting a reply. I recall my grandparents crying with relief when a message finally arrived and we learned that though she had been injured in the attack my mother was alive.

Transport for my mother back here was extremely difficult to arrange. But eventually she was assigned to a ship, the S.S. President Taft of the Matson Line, and returned safely though the threat of being sunk by Japanese submarines was foremost in all of our minds. The instructions to passengers aboard the ship were quite detailed warning about things like not throwing anything in the water since any such items, even scraps of paper might be picked up by a Japanese submarine and betraying the presence of the ship.

I look at the Radiogram in mom’s scrapbook, the menu she saved along with those instructions to passengers aboard the ship, the form she had to fill out before being assigned transport, the many photos and artifacts before and after the attack she included in the scrapbook, some showing the beauty of the Islands and the beauty of her life there, and some declaring how drastically and suddenly her life was changed because of the attack. One photo showing her wearing a gas mask really spoke volumes of the change.

It seemed no time at all following the attack on Pearl Harbor we began to see those small flags with blue stars in the windows of homes throughout Little Oklahoma declaring some loved one in the service, soon to begin displaying gold stars declaring the death of a loved one. In no time at all we children were buying war stamps in school, contributing to scrap drives and rationing began to impact our lives. Our comic books and the funny papers, the cartoon matinees at the Nile and Fox theaters had Bugs Bunny and others doing their bit against the Axis Powers.

On one occasion, we children at Mt. Vernon Elementary had bought enough war stamps to purchase a Jeep. The Californian and the school decided it would be a good idea to take a photo of the Jeep on the steps of the school. But it was to be taken with a couple of children in military uniform sitting in the Jeep. However, the children attending Mt. Vernon at the time were largely from dirt poor communities where parents were hard pressed to provide proper clothing for their children to even attend school, let alone those “cute” diminutive military uniforms in which those better off would often dress their children, my brother Ronnie and I being among these. And so it was that Ronnie and I were in that Jeep on the steps of the school for the picture appearing in the Californian.

I have quite a few pictures of Ronnie and me as children in military uniforms of the Army and Navy, and we loved dressing up like real soldiers and sailors. So I am qualified by experience to speak and write of many things surrounding WWII, things you will not find in most textbooks purporting to address that time in our history.

But even after all these years there are things our government has not allowed to see the light of day concerning WWII, and even I don’t know the extent to which my grandparents were involved, things like their association with the FBI at the time, things involving “important” people in Kern County and their associations with the black markets and espionage to which my grandparents were privy. I do recall one attempt on their lives when at a hotel in San Francisco. The FBI had arranged this “safe” place in order for them to give testimony in one case, but as a child the details of this were kept from me. And of course there are no written accounts available apart from those buried by the government like so many other things of that extremely dangerous period of our history. And as with the “disappearance” of the Ark of the Covenant in the film continues to be hidden from public view by our Federal Triune Dictatorship.

The recent arrest for espionage of Muslims in Bakersfield remind me of what my grandparents were dealing with during WWII. The enemies of America are always close at hand, not just in far off lands.

As a child I didn’t understand why grandad was given such unique status as the powers in Kern County appointing him a “Special Deputy Sheriff.” In retrospect it made sense because it was dangerous to send regular deputies into Little Oklahoma, and because of grandad being a preacher and without any taint of prejudice or bigotry he was the only Caucasian acceptable to the large Negro community to the north of us.

But could there have been more to the story? I’m sure there was. It was a dangerous time in America and “unconventional means” were being demanded in order to meet the dangers we faced as a nation at that time. In the case of my grandparents there was the very real threat to them through my brother and me. One way for the enemy to reach parents, or in this case grandparents is through their children. Ronnie and I couldn’t understand some of the precautions taken by our grandparents for our safety that resulted in so much travel around the country by train at the time, especially when such travel was being severely restricted for the war effort. And there were the posters everywhere asking “Is This Trip Necessary?”

Will it come to this because of the “war on terrorism” that Muslims will attack the real Achilles heel of those in power through their children? Are those in that mosque near you holding planning sessions how best to kidnap Bush’s children or the children or grandchildren of those in Congress? All the while attention is being given screening in airports is the danger far closer to home for those in power? Of this I have no doubt, those in power are extremely vulnerable to such a thing, and there can be no doubt our enemies will find willing accomplices in places like Mexico to effect such a thing as kidnappings.

We faced many real threats to America here at home during WWII. As a child I couldn’t possibly be aware of many of these threats; for example I couldn’t know why my grandparents took such extraordinary measures at times to protect my brother and me. All I knew there were times when my play was severely restricted, and impromptu trips around the country interfered with the lives of Ronnie and me.

Now I can understand why those internment camps were essential during WWII. You never knew who might be an enemy among the Japanese here in America, but we did understand and know Remember Pearl Harbor! And I have cause to remember it better than many others. We are in no better condition now with the mosques in America, all of which teach hatred of America and the “infidels” and are a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. And from experience I know it will only take one singular terrorist attack like that nuclear bomb being set off here to witness all Muslims being rounded up and those internment camps to once more appear in America along with our military in force along every inch of our borders.

The speeches will be made, politicians will pander unashamedly attempting to trade on 9/11, and all the while our borders remain open to any and all terrorists that want to do us harm. Caesar Bush will be telling us how much “safer” he has made America and the despicable white trash Clinton will keep howling about The Path to 9/11. But what will be missing is anything of a substantive nature done by politicians to ensure another 9/11 does not occur. Each will be posturing, pandering and prostituting themselves for votes, none will do what is best for America that will risk the “Latino vote” or secure our borders.

Certainly the parallel is plain between those like the president of Iran and Hitler, the parallel between WWII and what we are facing now is plain. But unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor that galvanized America and caused us to come together and unite as a nation to defeat the Axis powers, we are a fragmented and divided nation because of unscrupulous people in power that have led us to this dismal condition, emasculating us from coming together as a nation and uniting in order to defeat our enemies.

The axiom remains those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It is also axiomatic a politically correct war is unwinnable. For those of us who recall the realities of how a war is fought to win there is no forgetting the lessons of such history, and if I appear harsh in my condemnation of America’s “leadership” today my condemnation is all too well founded, and much of it has to do with my recalling the sacrifices made by the Great Generation, sacrifices now appearing to have been betrayed and of no lasting purpose or value. Of this I can be certain; either this war will be fought to win, our enemies will be named and properly demonized as they were during WWII or this time America will be lost.

Ah, gentle reader let’s hear a resounding round of applause for “National Brotherhood Week” and a national “Make Fun of the Handicapped” observance. Of course everyone hates everyone else and “everyone hates the Jews.” Before he threw in the towel and retreated to Santa Cruz Tom Lehrer gave it a good run. So much of his humor pricked the balloons of pompous asses taking themselves far too seriously I readily related to him from the very beginning, teaching my own children some of his gems like the Hunting Song: “I just stand there looking cute, and when something moves I shoot.” One would think Tom was referring to the way Republicans and Democrats are handling what is euphemistically referred to as “national policy.” It is certainly accurate in describing Caesar Bush’s “war on terrorism.”

Shoot first and ask questions later? Is that to be the doctrine of both Clinton and Bush haters knowing neither has the real interests of America in view, but rather that of their own? And that self-serving interest born of lies and deception on the part of both? “He’s a liar, but he’s our liar!” Some choice. Either/Or: F-9/11 or The Path to 9/11?

At least Tom could skewer outside the box of a growing stricture of political correctness with his gift for humor, and he helped us laugh at our prejudices. Now, as with The Producers, Blazing Saddles and other films that poked fun at those taking themselves too seriously it is not only forbidden to laugh at such things we must make a pretense of their not even existing. But like Blake’s Tyger there they remain burning as brightly as ever “in the forests of the night” though the evil men do in secret remains open scandal in heaven. At least those like Tom with a genuine gift of humor brought the Tygers out into the light of day and enabled us to laugh at them.

But now in an age of political correctness run amok where everyone is a “victim” of somebody, unless you are a Caucasian in which case you are required to keep apologizing to everyone who is not for your accident of birth, it becomes increasingly difficult to laugh at anything. Bad enough to have to deal with the very real threats of Muslims committed to a doctrine of “Death to the Infidel!” without having to deal with our own leaders seemingly committed to national suicide.

One wonders what with so much energy being expended by pundits taking themselves far too seriously stomping ants while the elephants are rampaging through the village where the stories are that focus on how ordinary Americans are struggling to swim upstream in the face of so many attacks on just trying to make a living honestly and trying to live peaceably with their neighbors.

But as the leopard cannot change its spots, neither can the politician change his ways. The species lies to gain elected office, then lies to stay in office and We the People are left not knowing who or what to believe.

Folks, we used to be able to laugh at ourselves. And now because of the unrelenting lies on the part of politicians, because of those dedicated to professional victimhood status and punishing all who do not fall in line with this hellish doctrine, because of the growing threat of nuclear Armageddon somewhere along the way we have lost the humor that was once our salvation from any taking themselves too seriously, and the evil men do is forcing us to choose between liars.

It took many years of working with children, together with the insights provided by those like Emerson, Thoreau, and Harper Lee for me to understand that it took factual knowledge plus wisdom to equal peace. Further, I had to come to an understanding that wisdom derived from love and compassion with an instinctive hatred of evil.

While Emerson and Thoreau pointed out many things about the evils of government, the wisdom of living simply and so many other things, there was something missing. I realized for example Henry through his never marrying and having children was deficient to a great extent by his ignorance of a large dimension of life.

But it would take the melding of Emerson, Thoreau, and Harper Lee to make it work for me. These together are representative of a melding of both halves of humankind for it to all come together and make sense. Neither, separately, could do this. In a very definite way, it takes something of the combination of both Tom Sawyer and little Scout to make it work.

For example, at the same time that Harper Lee can cause little Scout to think humorously of reasons why women are not allowed to serve on a jury, she can have Atticus say, “Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant.” It takes the wisdom of a woman to make this kind of observation through a man the way Harper Lee does.

When little Scout reads Mr. Underwood's editorial about the shooting and killing of Tom Robinson as he attempted to escape, her thoughts turn to the due process of law that led to his conviction, his defense by Atticus and the jury finding Tom guilty in spite of his obvious innocence, and she tries to make sense of it all. Then it comes to her: “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.” And this has been the insane history of humankind.

Facts are often ugly, stubborn things. But all the wishing in the world won't change them. And the ugliest facts the hearts of men have to deal with are that they have never cherished children and they have never considered women and children to be of equal value to men.

But we can either submit to the fatalistic, and nihilistic, truth of little Scout's assessment and Dill's idea of becoming helpless clowns, we can continue to destroy the wisdom of childhood and refuse to declare ourselves thereby assuring our destruction, or we can face the facts, accept them, and do those things necessary for finally attaining wisdom.

Equal rights for all, special privileges for none! is an ideal that has never been realized. And isn't going to be realized without wisdom. And until children are cherished, until women and children become accepted of equal value to men, the wisdom of equality and denial of special privilege will remain unattainable.

Prejudice and bigotry don't make sense to children. As Scout, Jem, and Dill struggle with the insanity of such things, Scout reflects on something that strikes her as very strange. Her third grade teacher is a Miss Gates. During a class discussion, the persecution of the Jews by Hitler comes up. Miss Gates, a Jew herself, waxes eloquent on Hitler's mistreatment of the Jews and uses his abuse of authority to compare it to the democratic government of America, the freedom and equality of American citizens.

But after Tom Robinson's trial, Scout overhears Miss Gates making very derogatory comments about Negroes. It doesn't make sense to Scout. How can Miss Gates talk about Hitler's mistreatment of the Jews square with her obvious dislike of Negroes as though they were the inferiors of Miss Gates?

Children are keen observers of adults. But it isn't possible for them to understand the prejudices and bigotry of adults. Scout couldn't possibly understand the obvious resentment engendered in those like Miss Gates, most particularly Miss Gates, because of a Negro feeling sorry for a white woman! Such an “outrageous” statement by Tom Robinson was not only incomprehensible to those like Miss Gates and to those on the jury, it was inexcusable effrontery! Why, it was almost as much as those people saying they're as good as us! I emphasize by underlining those people because you surely realize that “those people” could be anybody to anybody. Such has been the entire history of the human race. I mention this ugly incident because it so clearly underscores why Scout finally realized Tom Robinson was a dead man as soon as Mayella Ewell screamed. That's a hard thing for a small child to have to come to grips with. And when in history has it ever been any different? It hasn't. Is it any different now? No. Children throughout history have been handed this very same hard thing, and it is just as prevalent today as it has ever been.

However, you cannot possibly fight successfully against prejudice and bigotry while at the same time condoning other kinds of perversion such as the glorification of violence and promiscuous sex. Children are wise enough to know this. But if we, as adults, will confront, do battle and overcome these evils, showing children we are not indifferent, that we do care about them, that we cherish them through guarding and protecting their innocence as it is our obligation to do, we will finally acquire wisdom. And it will be the kind of wisdom that will save humankind, it will be the kind of wisdom that led little Scout to insist on Boo Radley offering his arm rather than her leading him home by the hand like a child.

When Boo pleaded so pitifully to Scout: Will you take me home? she knew he was a frightened child. The man, this madman, who had just killed an evil man in order to save her and Jem, was now only a frightened child pleading for her to take him home.

Scout had already shown the depth of her wisdom, that great part of wisdom which only a child understands fully in its depth of love, compassion, and instinctive hatred of evil, in agreeing with Sheriff Tate that to tell the truth about Boo would be in Scout's words and thinking sort of like shootin' a mockingbird.

But now as her wisdom has increased, she faces the plea of this grown man, this adult, mad guardian angel: Will you take me home? “He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark,” as Scout describes it.

She would lead him by the hand through the house and out onto the porch where the Sheriff and Atticus are discussing what to do. But she will not lead him home by the hand like a child. No! She will not!

Let Scout describe it in her own words: I put my foot on the top step and stopped. I would lead him through our house, but I would never lead him home. Mr. Arthur, bend your arm down here, like that. That's right sir. I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. He had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.

And once more, I can feel the sting of tears and a lump in my throat as I write of this. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. For your sake I have to admit it because I don't believe any one of any sensitivity can avoid feeling as I do when this whole scene unfolds. For those that do not feel as I do about this, I have to wonder...?

A madman, a mad guardian angel, their childhood bogeyman, has saved these children's lives. And now, little Scout is walking him home, her hand in his arm, a little lady and her gentleman friend. Let the neighbors stare and wonder! They would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.

That, gentle reader, is the epitome of loving wisdom on the part of a little eight year old girl, it is the loving wisdom adults pound out of children by bowing to the wicked dictum: When they get a little older, they won't cry about it anymore, they will understand they can't do anything about the evil in the world.

And so it is that good people have excused themselves, have attempted to absolve themselves, to call for “Pilate’s laver” if you will for not confronting and overcoming evil. To tell a child: You have to take what life deals you, and then to hypocritically refuse to do your part in doing all that is in your power to make that life all you can by being a responsible adult and doing your duty is damnable!

But this has been the history of the human race. And it cannot, must not, continue! Good people are going to have to confront their prejudices, their sins, and do better!

If it is sin to kill a mockingbird, for example, isn't it a greater sin to allow the predators of children to roam our world, to roam throughout America and to permit the destructive influence of violence called “entertainment” and pornography to invade their lives; to encourage violence and early sexual activity among children as though there were no consequences for their actions? Where, any thinking person must ask themselves, are our priorities? Most certainly the priorities are not directed to the cherishing of our children or consideration for their future.

We must ask ourselves, sensibly, are the present priorities leading to the advancement of civilized peace or Armageddon? And I believe any sensible person knows the fearful and horrifying answer to this question!

It wouldn't have occurred to Harper Lee because of her being a woman, because of her being such a lady. She left it to me as a man to point it out and make something of it: Scout would be the only lady, a little eight year old lady, to ever grace the arm of Mr. Arthur Radley.

And for me as a man, that is one of the deepest of the tragedies in the whole book. Scout would not realize this of course. After all, she is only eight years old and should not realize it. It is one of the great benefits of childhood to not have to realize or even be aware of such things.

Scout never saw Boo again. But I like to believe he died peacefully and content. He had been the guardian angel of the children. In what had to have been the sanest moment of his life, he was there for them. But, then, the children had been his guardian angels in turn. And at no time more than when a little lady graced his arm as she walked with him and he was no longer “Boo,” but the gentleman Mr. Arthur Radley escorting the little lady Miss Jean Louise Finch. I believe I could die alone, peacefully content, with only such a treasured memory to comfort me.

It was only fitting that Scout should be sad thinking that in spite of all Boo's gifts to them, even saving their lives, she and Jem had never given Boo anything in return. But Harper Lee did point out the benefit to Boo in watching the children through the shuttered windows of his dark, decaying tomb of a house.

The joy it must have brought to him in watching them and placing those small gifts in the hole of that tree for them to discover. Even taking part in a kind of game they devised about him that he surely watched through cracks in those shuttered windows, and even enjoying the attempts by the children to get a glimpse of him. And how good he must have felt when, unseen and unknown to anyone but himself, he placed that blanket over little Scout's shivering shoulders.

Boo shared in the children's lives, and they, unknowingly, gave that degree of reason and happiness to a madman. They became “his children.” And in the end they became one another's guardian angels, and Boo became the gentleman Mr. Arthur Radley and Scout became the little lady Miss Jean Louise Finch. As I said, I like to believe Boo died content with that memory to sustain him to and through the end.

I would that all adults throughout the world believing themselves sane were as insane as Boo Radley in respect to children. The genius of Harper Lee was in using a madman to balance the scales of justice. Civilized people, because of the perversion of law, could not protect the children against determined evil.

But it was the patently insane prejudice of civilized good people that loosed this evil against the children by condemning an innocent man on the sole basis of the color of his skin and freed the guilty because of the color of their skins! And it is the children who pay the highest price for such ugly prejudice and perversion of law on the part of adults.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is not the daily reading of Americans. But real scholars still turn to him. And one of the reasons they do so is because, with a keen and incisive mind, he, like Thoreau, cut through the religious and political cant of his day in an extraordinary way. In respect to religion, he said after attending a church service:

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth ... and summoning the dead to its present tribunal.

If the dead, especially the children, could be brought to such a tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say about “good people” refusing to confront evil and giving the Devil success by their default?

But Emerson exposes the excuse good people use for not doing their duty to confront and overcome evil. This leads to his most rational conclusion of the fallacy that lies in the immense concession to evil by those supposing themselves to be good: That the bad are expected to be successful and justice is not expected to be done now! The excuse on the part of good people as Emerson makes clear is to refuse to pay the price for justice now, to blame God and others and not take personal responsibility for confronting evil; the excuse derived from religion by good people from time immemorial.

Any reasonable person is able to understand and accept Emerson's remarks in the light of knowledge. The application of such knowledge to wisdom is another matter. And it is at this point good people fail to gain wisdom from such knowledge, for even Emerson and Thoreau failed in wisdom by not realizing or accepting the fact that ultimate wisdom is unattainable unless that other half of humankind, women, is accepted in fact and in practice as of equal value to men.

How is it, though, that such obvious knowledge as Emerson exemplifies is rejected by good people? Because of the prejudices of good people who choose what they want to believe, in flagrant disregard of reason and factual knowledge!

Good people holding onto their prejudices thus assure a self-fulfilling prophecy of harming themselves and children by disputing and refusing facts. The failure of the good finally triumphing over evil is the fault of the prejudices of good people who will not confront their prejudices for the ugly, destructive things they are! Or are simply too busy to be involved, too busy to be free!

Only when differences based on such prejudices are set aside and children are made the priority of nations will good people come together in common cause to confront and overcome evil; which is the job of good people, not that of God, angels, or institutions. Only then will there be something new under the sun that will lead to wisdom and peace.

There is most certainly nothing new in Emerson's remarks; people have expressed the same thoughts many times and in many ways; they continue to be expressed now, and, in fact, I have just done so. But I do so to call attention to the need of going beyond such knowledge, which Emerson expresses so succinctly, and to put this knowledge into practice, setting aside all prejudices of beliefs and acting according to factual knowledge. It is the right and wise thing to do, but can only be done by the setting aside of personal prejudices and coming together on the sole basis of making children the priority they have never been. And by doing so, to take that first step toward the kind of wisdom humankind has failed to acquire which will lead to our accepting personal responsibility for the kind of world we want children to inherit.

Once more: If, as Emerson stated, we were able to summon the dead to our own tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say? More importantly, let us suppose we were able to summon the murdered children to such a tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say?

Can you even suppose the children would accept our feeble excuses, those excuses based on personal beliefs in God, angels, and Last Judgments of the wicked whether you are a Democrat or Republican, White, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, whether you are Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist or without any particular or no religious belief, in lieu of our failure to do all that was our responsibility and in our power to protect them? I think not.

The challenge the message of the children presents, and one Harper Lees makes so very clear, is that of awakening the consciences of adults to the all-too-often silent cry of children who cannot be heard, who have no other voice but that of adults. And to repeat once more: What happened to a little girl that produced a woman like Mayella as opposed to a little girl like Scout and her so very different prospects as a woman? We know the answer to this question. But we do not want to act according to this knowledge. And by refusing to do so, we condemn ourselves to continue, as humankind has ever done, without wisdom.

It can't be a better world for my children until it is a better world for all the little Scouts, all the Jems, Dills, and Mayellas as well. And this isn't going to be the case until there is no further need of the little Scouts to confront lynch mobs, until there are no more juries that will convict Tom Robinson while freeing the guilty, until there is no further need of Boo Radley to do the job supposedly sane and civilized people refuse and fail to do. And without wisdom, this will never come to pass.

One of the more melancholy tasks I had to undertake here of late was making sure the Pearl Harbor material my mother had given into my keeping not long before she passed away was placed in the proper hands in order to assure it being available to serious students for historical study. Having been in Pearl Harbor when it was attacked, a shell exploding in her kitchen injuring her, my mother had an intense interest in all the events surrounding that Day of Infamy and kept quite an extensive scrapbook of that period in our history.

For the historian nothing takes the place of primary source material; all else is educated guesswork. And being a scholar of history I knew the importance of my mother’s memorabilia from that era and the responsibility I had in making sure it was made available for others doing historical research into that period of time. Even the Pearl Harbor first anniversary edition of the Los Angeles Examiner my mother had saved had great historical value, since most newspapers of that time were committed to being recycled for the war effort and it might very well be this issue of the paper is the only one available for study. The importance of this particular edition of the paper being among other things like the first critical review of a new film titled “Casablanca,” this was the first time actual photos of the attack were made available through the War Department for the general population to see and the paper using color requiring government approval for the picture showing the very moment a Japanese bomb struck the U.S.S. Shaw.

Shortly after the Attack on America a columnist from the L. A. Times and I were discussing the need for a slogan like Remember Pearl Harbor, and we both agreed Remember 9/11 was the most appropriate. We both knew such slogans were essential as a unifying force bringing a nation together in common cause against a clearly defined enemy.

But sadly, we were to be disappointed since we both came to realize this was not going to be a declared war against the enemy of Islam, that this enemy not only was not going to be clearly defined, but this was to be a politically correct war not intended to be fought to win, but one to protect the guilty and further enrich and empower those who intended to profit from the Attack on America. The only thing we were unsure of was whether 9/11 like December 7 could have been prevented but was not because of sheer ineptitude or something darkly evil and malevolent on the part of those in power. Even today it is being argued whether FDR purposely encouraged the attack on Pearl Harbor for the “greater good.” Caesar Bush and Company? By now, even people not given to conspiracy theories have cause to wonder?

The problem confronting us is the fact we don’t know who is lying or who is telling the truth about 9/11. We know Sandy Berger is a morally bankrupt liar, we know he stole papers that pointed the finger of guilt at the Clinton administration. We know those like Albright have “selective memories” of the events surrounding 9/11 and bin Laden. But there is also “Bin Laden who?” Rice who, among many others, would do anything to protect Bush. And few doubt the 9/11 Commission, as with the Warren Commission was an exercise in protecting the guilty.

Summing the scum primarily from the Clinton camp screaming over the forthcoming ABC miniseries Kathleen Parker concludes her column on the subject “To our great peril, nothing much has changed.” Right, Kathleen, and when it comes down to whose word We the People are to take the fact few trust any from either the Republican or Democrat side of 9/11 speaks for itself, especially the refusal on the part of both to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor, underscoring why nothing much has changed. Politicians and their corporate bosses have only power and wealth motivating them.

Diana West asks “It’s been five years, so who’s the enemy?” Well, to answer Diana I would say when you don’t know who is telling the truth it is impossible to know who the real enemy is. During WWII many Germans came to realize they had been lied to, but by the time they realized this it was too late and Hitler had total power.

We the People know we are being lied to, but what can we do about it? Is it already too late? We know when primary source material is destroyed to protect the guilty we are in the hands of those no better than Hitler or Stalin. Still, in a nuclear age and faced with the implacable foe of Islam we can only hope our leadership will come to realize pragmatically the stakes are too high not to fight this war to win, even though for the most base of motives. The alternative is … what?

Years after the filming of To Kill a Mockingbird, several of the makers of it as well as those who played in it were interviewed. It was agreed that there were two truly magical moments in the film. The first is at the very beginning. The title sequences with the little girl humming and singing to herself, the use of the cigar box with its contents like the rolling marble, together with the little girl drawing, and then tearing, the crayon picture of the mockingbird accompanied by her little girl's lyrically musical, giggling laughter. The whole scene draws you into the magical world of a happy child, the happiest of all worlds imaginable.

The second magical moment occurred early in the film. It is bedtime; Scout is in bed and Atticus is listening to her read. As she is getting ready to be tucked in to go to sleep, she asks to see Atticus' watch.

The whole scene, the mystical, magical bonding between an innocent little girl and her father, little Scout's stretching and yawning, the way she holds her father's watch in her small hands and reads the inscription, cuddling her teddy bear while being tucked in and the sleepy questions to Jem about their mother is not only magical, it is the most touching scene of the film. It is the reason Mary Badham was nominated for an Oscar for virtually no one with a good conscience and a genuine love of children can help being touched by the captivating and precious tenderness of such a thing. It appeals to the very best in all of us as human beings.

But as Mary said years later, she wasn't acting; she was just being a little girl. And that is always magic. But it isn't the kind of magic to which the world awards its plaudits of recognition and praise. We adults don't reward the natural gift of the art and wisdom of childhood; we reward the adult that has to work hard at even pretending they still have this magical and natural art and wisdom of childhood.

The producers of the film in this interview, which occurred so many years after the making of it, were right. There has never been another film like To Kill a Mockingbird. There is no other film like it. And while all the superlatives have been used in attempting to describe it, I especially like what director Robert Mulligan said of it in eloquently classic and elegant understatement: “It is a very particular film.”

But most of the major film studios wouldn't touch the book regardless of it being a Pulitzer Prize winner and so popular with the reading public because they couldn't see any real story in it that would appeal to moviegoers. The consensus of the studios quoting one executive, “There's no story; there's no action, no romance, no obvious sex or violence.”

This, of course, was an early indication To Kill a Mockingbird was a book of far greater depth than anyone really knew, notwithstanding its Pulitzer status. But it would take time for this to be discovered.

In its film form, it took the genius of people like Horton Foote (who won the best screenplay Oscar for his work), Elmer Bernstein, Robert Mulligan, and Alan Pakula to make the story. And it took the talented genius of those like the children, Gregory Peck, and the superb artistic qualities of others to make it come alive on-screen.

It took real artistic genius for the makers of the film to accomplish so very successfully the transporting of an audience back to the time during which the events of the film take place, wonderfully enhanced by Bernstein's hauntingly beautiful musical score of genius simplicity, much like that of the novel itself, and the exquisitely distinctive and natural Southern charm of Kim Stanley's voice as narrator.

But while Gregory Peck was an undisputed natural for the role of Atticus, the most difficult task confronting the producers was to find the right children for the roles of Scout and Jem. Hundreds of children all through the South were tried before Mary Badham and Phillip Alford were selected, only to discover they lived within four blocks of each other in Birmingham but had never met.

If miracles ever occur in film making, this was one. The two children were not only perfectly suited for the roles of Scout and Jem, even having the necessary family resemblance and characteristics, anyone watching the film cannot fail to appreciate how naturally the two children interact as though they are, in fact, brother and sister.

Another miracle, as one might be excused for so construing it, was in the totally innocent and naturally unaffected talent of little Mary Badham, this really setting the film apart from all others and making it what it is: A truly great film.

I certainly agree with those who say that there has never been a film like To Kill a Mockingbird. It stands uniquely alone, and has a peculiar and distinctive place all by itself in the whole of the history of filmmaking. The film and its history are a worthy study in and of themselves.

However, if there is a single most important aspect to the film, it is this: While Peck was given an Oscar; one should have gone to Mary Badham. It wasn't Peck who made the film what it is; it was Mary! What makes this so very significant is the fact that adults still lack the wisdom of childhood. And adults made the film claiming to try to capture things through the eyes of children. They didn't. And the Oscar went to Peck.

But as I mentioned previously, the film while a work of art in its own right and deserving of the praise and plaudits it received and still receives couldn't tell the real story of the novel, the real story Harper Lee captures so vividly through the eyes of the children, especially little Scout. The film comes close during those two magical scenes of the title sequences and in that early scene of little Scout and Atticus. And it shows, but without telling why, little Scout is walking Boo to his house with her hand in his arm rather than leading him by the hand. But as I have said, it would have taken a film of epic length to explain things like this; and the filmmakers knew the film would only succeed on the basis of adult issues and behaviors, not those of children.

Further, it can be argued that in 1962 no filmmaker would dare touch the real issues of the book in the way Harper Lee does in the novel itself. I would argue it isn't even possible now. And I am certain Harper Lee had to hold herself in check at times, which is clearly evidenced by some of her hints and allusions of things and issues that people even today don't want to recognize or speak of.

However, I give the film’s makers and those who played in it a lot of credit, and most especially little Mary Badham, for creating a work of art that despite a few rough spots stands alone among films in its artistic greatness.

But to repeat, it didn't, nor do I believe it could, tell the real story of Harper Lee's novel. And it is that real story, or rather, I believe, the story behind the story, told the way Harper Lee tells it, that makes her book stand alone as a work of genius which I compare with the best of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky; and even exceeding these in the very genius of the simplicity of its greatness. But, then, I maintain greatness is a simple thing, almost ingenuous if you will.

For example, the real test of greatness is time. The novel came out in 1960. I have had all these years of reading it and am still learning things from it. The story, the way Harper Lee wrote it, is a treasure hunt; one I can compare with Thoreau's Walden. You may go over the same ground many times and miss a gem. Then, at some point in your life, simply due to the experiences of life, while you are going over such familiar ground your eye suddenly catches the glint of some exquisite jewel you missed so many times before.

I have only to look at the notations, which I have made over the years in my copy of the book, the pages now fragile and yellowed by time just like my copy of Walden, to realize this. And, as with my copy of Walden, I am still making new notations every time I read it.

The thrill and excitement of discovery is often enhanced by the realization that in some cases Thoreau and Harper Lee missed the import of these things in their entirety as well, that they wrote better than they knew. But as I have learned, one of the characteristics of genius is to often be unaware of its own genius.

This is why I believe Harper Lee, especially, wrote better than she knew. As she has Dill say (probably due to the influence of her childhood friend, Truman Capote, who was a kind of model for Dill) after the trial and having wept over the outcome “I think I'll be a clown when I get grown...There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh.”

Little Dill is already beginning to learn the wisdom of adulthood and lose the wisdom of a child, and much more quickly than Mr. Raymond had prophesied. Adult wisdom is already beginning its dirty work of destroying the child's wisdom of fairness and justice, and replacing it with the adult “wisdom” of the cynicism: There's nothing you can really do about overcoming evil. And so it is that the history of humankind has been one of unremitting hatreds, prejudices, and warfare by forsaking the wisdom of childhood.

Adult wisdom amounts to this: There's no use being a child unless you know the world is going to eventually break your heart! To which I reply: What's wrong with this picture? But even as I say the words I know it takes wisdom to figure this out, wisdom the world has yet to attain.

I find it passing strange that I am the kind of man who loves books and films like Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias, and still be the kind of tough-minded, hard-edged man I am in so many other ways. I believe it was my children who saved me from becoming callous, cynical, and bitter. And though I failed them in innumerable ways it was my children who brought out the best part of me as a man, even as his children brought out the best in Atticus.

After little Scout's miraculously ingenuous dispersal of the lynch mob, Atticus makes this observation to Jem and Scout: So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it? That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Maybe we need a police force of children....

An intriguing thought isn't it, a police force of children.

What will not be done for the sake of civilized and sane conscience, the law must do. Just laws are for the protection of the civilized and intended to punish evildoers, the lawless that act without conscience, not the law-abiding that have no fear of just laws. On the contrary, the law-abiding, the good and civilized people of good, sane, and sensible conscience applaud and support such laws; which made it all the more impossible for Scout, Jem, and Dill to understand how that jury could have found Tom Robinson guilty. Such a verdict was so very obviously and totally unfair, unjust, without conscience, and in fact, insane to the children!

But a mob is often made up of one's friends and neighbors as Atticus points out to the children. Whenever I confront friends and good people with their own sin of hypocrisy by their agreeing that children must be the closest thing to the heart of God Himself and then living as though there is anything of greater importance, I am seldom thanked for the service I do them.

If I point out that the world itself behaves as a lynch mob because the greatest minds throughout history have lacked the wisdom to cherish children, that the greatest civilizations have warred and met destruction repeatedly because the greatest leaders of history have lacked such wisdom, that the particular cases of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are evidence of things having never changed for the better for children I don't meet with much applause.

The mob that wanted to lynch Tom Robinson was composed of friends and neighbors of Atticus, many of them calling themselves, and undoubtedly even believing themselves God-fearing people, Jesus-and-Bible-believing and loving people. And had not the children intervened, these good friends and neighbors, these God-fearing, Jesus-and-Bible-believing and loving people would have hurt Atticus to get to Tom Robinson and lynch him! And these very same people comprised the jury that found Tom Robinson guilty!

The most difficult part of the message of the children is that it confronts good people, good people that as a mob or unjust jury will condemn the innocent. But if good people will allow little Scout to confront them individually, the wisdom of a sane, good, and pure conscience will prevail.

It is on an individual basis that good people prove their ability to respond to the need to protect that wise innocence of children which is the single most precious thing that is the responsibility of adults to protect! Once that lynch mob was confronted by this fact in little Scout, they came to their senses. The challenge is to direct these good individuals to come together in concert for the good of children, all children.

But not in the name of their peculiar institutions or religious beliefs, not in the name of Democrats or Republicans or any other but simply because it is their duty and responsibility as adult human beings, simply because it is the right and wise thing to do! This is one of the things that militate against people supporting this concept; they cannot hang any of their bigotries, religious or political prejudices on it. It carries no baggage being simply the right and wise thing for people, all people, to do.

However, the lynch mob, the unjust jury, the comfortable congregation, is led of a pack mentality, a pack mentality that includes the insanity of groupthink. Or, in such cases, the group insanity led of the prejudices that make good people so utterly lacking in wisdom agree together to commit evil in the hypocritical corruption of the very names of God, justice, and fairness!

Scout points out how Atticus needed her, how he couldn't get along a day without her helping and advising him. Atticus had done a marvelous job as a father raising his little girl to think in such a way. He had made her feel important and needed.

Of course Scout couldn't know as a child of the things that really made her so important and needed to her father, the things he responded to in his little girl that led her to believe he relied on her help and advice. She couldn't know how important and needed it was to Atticus for her to climb up on his lap and hug him, how important and needed it was to her father for him to be able to tuck her into bed and kiss her good night, and how important and needed she was in making her father a real man, a fair and just man, a real gentleman who didn't dare betray his little one's love and trust!

We men need our boys. We want to be able to teach our boys to be men. But we need the cherishing of our little girls to make us men soft in the right places so that the melding of the hard and soft results in the right alloy of toughness to both be able to love as well as be able to confront, fight, and overcome evil.

There is absolutely no greater influence for good in the life of any man than to have his child climb onto his lap seeking the warmth and strength of his love and protection. No king on any throne can possibly possess such wealth and power as a man with his arms about that trusting little one he is holding. And no man with such memories can straightaway forsake these and go about doing evil. I believe God meant children to be this influence for good in men's lives, to bring out the best in the best of men.

And knowing this how is it possible that the world has never attained to the wisdom of such a thing? How is it possible that humankind still behaves too many times as a lynch mob? How is it possible that humankind still looks to God or some messiah to deliver it from its own seeming helplessness and inability to confront evil and for the good to be victorious?

But it is a self-imposed tyranny of evil through blind, ignorant, and hateful prejudices that makes good people seemingly impotent in the face of evil, that has prevented enough good men and women coming together in common cause for the common good of all humankind. Through this allowed and self-imposed tyranny of evil, good people have failed to make that common good of all humankind, Children, their priority.

Then, rather than accept personal responsibility for ridding themselves of this tyranny of evil, good people will turn to blaming others, institutions, and even God for the evil! And then good people will tell themselves that had they sat on Tom Robinson's jury they would not have been party to such a perversion in the name of justice, that they would have stood up and been counted. And these same good people will say their prayers at night and go to sleep with an easy conscience while the children continue to be molested, brutalized and murdered without hope of either protection or justice!

After the trial, Jem and Scout are asking their father how such a blatant injustice as that committed against Tom Robinson was possible in the face of his obvious innocence? In the course of trying to explain Atticus tells the children, “It's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time.”

Jem and Scout retire to Jem's room to discuss some of the things their father has told them. Jem is trying to be the big brother and keep the peace between Scout and their aunt. For example, Jem tells Scout to try to get along with Aunt Alexandra; that she is only trying to help Scout become a lady, something Scout heartily resents. In fact, when Jem says to Scout, “Can't you take up sewin' or somethin'?” Scout's immediate and direct reply is, “H--- no.”

Scout is only eight and has no real command or understanding of invective. She innocently uses the profanity because she thinks this is how she has to react to a big brother who is trying to push her around, insisting she become a lady, a traumatic change from Jem accusing her of acting like a girl such a short time ago. This is the only device besides her fists she knows to stick up for herself without mother or sister, or even a close girl playmate in her male-dominated environment.

But things settle down between them, and the children begin discussing what makes people different. Their aunt has told them they come from good people of good breeding; that some others like the Cunninghams are trash and fine people like themselves, the Finches, should not associate with them.

Scout particularly resents this; in fact it infuriates her, causing her to lose her temper. This helps to account for her using the word “h---;” she was angry with her aunt and she becomes angry with Jem when he seems to be trying to boss her. She likes little Walter Cunningham and would like to have him visit. But this brought on the comments by her aunt concerning what she considered suitable friends for the children and Scout's resulting, furious resentment.

Scout's resentment and anger is also born of another source, one she simply cannot understand. Her father would never call anyone “trash;” he treated everyone alike, often going out of his way to be polite to people whom his sister, aunt Alexandra, obviously thought and spoke of as “trash.” How could her aunt be so different from Atticus? It didn't make sense. And all this fuss about background and ancestors; why should such things make a difference between people, why should such things be so obviously important to aunt Alexandra and not to Atticus? Atticus and Aunt Alexandra were brother and sister. How could they be so close and think so differently? Scout and Jem sometimes wondered about stories of “changelings.”

As Scout and Jem calm down and begin reflecting on what their aunt has said and trying to work through the differences between people, Jem says in evaluating their aunt's remarks, “The thing about it is, our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks.” Neither of the children can really understand why this is so. They just know it's the way things are. But they also know, as only children do, that there is something plainly wrong with this and are trying to make sense of it. Scout says she thinks folks are just folks and that's the way it ought to be.

Jem's face grows cloudy at Scout’s observation and he says to her, “That's what I thought too ... If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time ... it's because he wants to stay inside.”

What normal adult can't understand the confusion of Jem and Scout? But I can't get away from little Dill's cynical conclusion: “I think I'll be a clown when I get grown...There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh.”

Children should never have to become so cynical or have the wisdom of childhood destroyed by adults who have given up the fight and give countless and much practiced excuses for their hypocrisy, for their forsaking their own personal responsibility to confront and overcome evil!

I repeatedly hear of this or that person doing good for children. But when I pursue these stories, too many times I discover such people often don't even know the name of their State or U.S. Senator, they don't even know the name of their Representative in Congress, they have never written a letter to an editor of their local paper or their legislator; local, state or federal. Some who are eligible aren't even registered to vote! And many that are registered don't bother!

No matter what good people think they are doing to make things better for children, is it that such good people think they are really making a difference when they are not involved in the political process? And yet so many of these good people are among the first to complain against the suffering of children, complaining about so many unjust laws and corrupt legislators. This is hypocrisy which good people fail to recognize as such!

Such people may be good people, but they are not good citizens! And when you are too busy to be a good citizen, you will wake up one day only to discover you were too busy to be free!

No matter how many good works people think they are accomplishing by teaching in a public or Sunday school or working with children in any capacity, they are doing nothing of any lasting value unless they are also actively involved with the political process at all levels: local, state, and federal.

I grow weary of the stories of this or that one, of how much of an effect they are having for the good of children when such people haven't so much as written their local politicians or the editor of their local paper! Don't delude yourself that real change for the better for children can ever be accomplished without good people being politically active. It isn't going to happen. Wicked, evil people seem to know this even if good people don't!

But it is far easier for example to delude yourself that you are making a real difference by teaching a class of some kind, perhaps working in some social service capacity or other. There you are, actually working with children and thinking all the while you are making a substantial difference. If you are not active in the political process you are deceiving yourself.

There are many preaching from thousands of pulpits across America that delude themselves they are making a difference. I used to be one of these. But in fact most of these are men who will never accept women and children as of equal value to men and preach accordingly using the Bible, Torah, or Koran to “prove” women are inferior to men. And in doing so, put the lie to their profession of faith by denying the equal value of women and children to men, by denying that children are the closest thing to the heart of God Himself, and refusing to accept their share of the blame for contributing to the resulting misery of children and the denigrating of women!

Making a real difference is being a responsible part of the power of We the People, a good citizen regardless of your religion or politics, to change government so that you are a part of the solution for all the children, not just the few with whom you are working. I spent many years working with thousands of children and suffering the same delusion that I was making a real difference before I realized the truth of this. Go ahead and become an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, go ahead and build an orphanage, go ahead and become a teacher, be a foster parent, a Big Brother or Sister, a mentor, a Scout leader. These things are good, noble, and worthy works in the cause of children, for humankind. But they won't change anything! They never have and they never will!

As good and noble, as needed as good works are on behalf of children, in and of themselves they will never accomplish the goal of changing things for the better for all the children without Americans becoming good citizens. The magnitude of evil, the size of the Beast, if you will, is too great to overcome by any single effort, or combination of efforts now existing because they are often so fragmented and very often at cross purposes because of religious or political differences and prejudices.

I wish I could get good people, We the People, to understand that unless we have good government, good leaders and good laws nothing is going to change for the better no matter how much time, energy, and money is expended on all good works no matter how many children good people believe they are helping. I wish I could get good people involved in the political process, that good people would recognize the way to accomplish something of substantive and lasting value for all children is the task of good citizens. As I came to realize, I could never make things really better for my own children until things became better for all children.

Good people throughout history have allowed the insanity of their own prejudices to overcome the wise sanity of prioritizing and cherishing children, all children, and the result has been a history of the insanity of hatreds based on prejudices, invariably leading to the insanity of every description of lynch mob and war rather than the wise sanity of peace.

Looks simple enough on the face of it, doesn't it. Then what's the problem? The problem is the prejudices of good people who consistently fail to recognize or admit of such prejudices, good people who refuse to admit of their prejudices or face them for they are, and consistently confuse what they believe with what they know. The problem is the same one throughout history that has led to the need of the vigilante and Boo Radley, and to good people who will become a lynch mob or a jury condemning the innocent like Tom Robinson to death, to good people who will kill one another in the name of God, race, or political ideologies.

But when little Scout climbs up on her father's lap, when that little one knows she is protected, needed, and loved. Ah, what a difference that should make in a man! No man with that memory, no man with such power and wealth in his arms, no man who loves as Atticus loved his children, is going to let any prejudice rule his passions. I believe such a man's passions and mind already have a monarch, and one who rules with the wisdom of love, God Himself, through His most precious little agents of love and wisdom: Children.

Simple enough? Just try preaching this sermon. Watch good men, for example, nod their heads in the affirmative of the need of their accepting women and children as of equal value to men, of the civilizing influence of women and children to contravene war. Then watch these same men in their hypocrisy go on about business as usual!

It is so very easy to accept the fact that there is no belief or fear of God in people like the evil Ewell or his daughter, people that put their hands on a Bible and swear before God and neighbors, before all humankind to tell the truth, and then lie in order to put an innocent man to death. But it is not easy to accept the fact that obviously good people may have no belief or fear of God in them.

But logic would seem to demand this to be the case. If good people are going to agree that children are the closest thing to the heart of God Himself and then live as though there is something of greater importance, the very least such good people are guilty of is the stench of hypocrisy!

I have said that most people would say it is easy to be on the side of the angels. I have also pointed out the fact that while this is easy to say, it is very difficult to practice. Particularly when you attempt to be on the side of the angels in trying to speak for the children in confronting the prejudices and hypocrisies of good people.

“The Path to 9/11” the ABC miniseries will air Sunday and Monday. But it is already catching h--- from the left, especially by those kindly disposed to the Clintons and lapdog Janet Ruby Ridge/Waco Reno. However, the facts are indisputable concerning the utter emasculation of our intelligence agencies making them incapable through political correctness of gathering the necessary information to the end of protecting America. Eventually we wound up with an FBI the leadership of which couldn’t even turn on a computer, let alone use one!

The maddening part of all of this is the fact whether Republican or Democrat no one in government is ever held personally accountable for the part they play in making things like 9/11 and the Katrina debacle possible. And as a consequence of consistent whitewashing and downright lies We the People never know the truth of anything from the mouths of politicians and their lackeys.

Only fools could fail to understand the civilized nations of the world are facing an implacable enemy in Islam, an enemy committed to a woman-hating religion of the sword that believes it is ordained by God to destroy all non-Muslims! But to repeat the obvious: A politically correct war is unwinnable!

In “The American President” an unabashedly Hollywood/ACLU film Michael Douglas says “Maybe someday someone will explain to me what a ‘proportionate response’ really means.” Michael Medved turns the tables on Douglas by asking “Why seek ‘proportional’ warfare?” This has been my question from the beginning of this phony “war on terrorism,” that like the phony “war on drugs” is phony in every aspect made so glaringly obvious by many things beginning with not prosecuting a war to win, but the refusal of Caesar Bush and Company to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws for the sole purpose of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy! Something so obvious the whole world easily recognizes the hypocrisy of such a thing!

The despicable Rumsfeld accuses those like me of “moral or intellectual confusion,” even accusing us of being “Nazis” for calling attention to the fact this shameful, self-serving disgrace to America had no plan for prosecuting a war in Afghanistan or Iraq except to sacrifice American troops to the egos of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. But are those of us calling for Rumsfeld to resign going to be labeled “anti-Semitic” for doing so? After all, he is in fact a Jew.

When a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle called me a “Nazi” because I continue to demand our borders be secured and our immigration laws be enforced, considering the source I took it as a compliment. Kinky Friedman, though a Jew, will be called a Nazi if he is elected governor of Texas and fulfills a campaign promise to send 10,000 troops to the Texas border to stop the invasion of America from the enemy nation of Mexico.

What we just witnessed in that attack on a reporter in San Diego by those Mexican barbarians is the usual way of doing business in Mexico, and now imported into America. What leaped out at me during a televised interview with this reporter was that after weeks of his investigating these barbarians when asked if they were illegal aliens he replied he didn’t know!

How, after weeks of investigating this barbaric couple for identity theft, real estate fraud and other crimes, and interviewing a number of witnesses who claimed they had been threatened by these two, even threatening one witness with breaking his legs and raping his wife the reporter couldn’t even answer the question of whether they were illegal aliens? Now that folks is political correctness run amok! I have no doubt the reporter knew the answer, but even after being savagely attacked and beaten by these Mexican barbarians was emasculated by political correctness from answering the question.

America is being threatened by Iran, North Korea, and Mexico. But the refusal of our leadership to address these threats in any meaningful way gives our enemies the advantage, not just in propaganda but in reality. Whether Republican or Democrat it remains that politically correct warfare is unwinnable. And the only proportionate response to our enemies is to “Bash their heads in!” The refusal to use the “Big Stick” can only be construed by our enemies as weakness, and quite properly so.

An article I wrote some time ago for our local paper The Kern Valley Sun was entitled “Barflies: An endangered species.” This came about because of my being in attendance while a couple of young attractive women were rousted by police at one of the local pubs. I had become acquainted with the girls before the cops arrived, but the vice cops were making the rounds here in the valley at the time, and while the girls were not “soliciting” it turns out the cops had been sicced on them by a disgruntled barroom Romeo whose unwanted advances were rejected by the young women.

But all the pubs in the valley were being subjected to these “visits” by vice cops at this time due to some kind of “crackdown” being ordered from on high. And I had to wonder whether some of the rousts were not due to some of the local girls turning down the unwanted advances of more than just barroom Romeos? Would a cop actually go so far as soliciting some of these girls by way of enticement? Or could a couple of them actually be looking? Unthinkable!

Ok, so maybe not all that unthinkable. But the whole thing caused me to come home and write the article. A good friend even made a poster with two cartoon flies drinking through straws from martini glasses and I handed them out to all the local bars. The caption read, “We thank you for your patronage and your support of this endangered species: Barflies!”

Alas, some of the good people in the valley failed to see the humor of my article; some even questioning my Christian credentials. To my critics I answered Jesus must have appreciated a good time what with providing those many gallons of wine for that marriage feast in Cana. And no, it wasn’t grape juice as many of my good Baptist friends would have it. When the fellow in charge of the ceremonies pronounced the wine (Greek: oinos) Jesus provided better than what they had been drinking previously he wasn’t comparing grape juice.

Eventually this episode became a chapter in my book Birds With Broken Wings, in which I suggested politicians would do well to get out and mingle with the people frequenting bars if they really wanted to become acquainted with an honest “Slice of life.” And I mean the kinds of bars far removed from those in Georgetown, Kennebunkport, or the song “Cocktails for Two,” bars like Trout’s in Oildale or those here in the Kern River Valley.

However, I had an edge over most politicians doing “field work” of this nature. Being tall and handsome as well as playing guitar and singing in some of the clubs gave me a distinct advantage while writing the book, and while some are tall and handsome there aren’t that many politicians that can successfully mingle in the bars by playing guitar and singing. More’s the pity.

I loved playing clarinet and tenor sax and did so for many years, but guitar must have been in my genes or a product of Little Oklahoma. However, playing the clubs and coffeehouses of the 60s in SoCal was far removed from the “education” I was to gain by playing some of the cuttin’ ‘n’ shootin’ honkytonks. Politicians need a strong dose of this kind of education.

So my “credentials” for writing as I do are more than that of the academic or strictly literary person. But if politicians have lost touch with the reality of how We the People suffer as a consequence of their decisions not a little of this lost contact has to do with their not getting out there and mingling with real Americans living their real lives in the face of so much adversity. And the folks in the bars should have the ears of politicians ever as much as those one finds in the churches. In point of fact, while I love the rural churches of America as being representative of the Real America I don’t discount that part of the Real America to be found in bars as well.

“America is safer, but we are not yet safe.” For a White House infamous for vacuous inanities and empty rhetoric this one is really right up there at the top alongside “Mission Accomplished.” With the floodgates open to millions of illegal aliens pouring across our borders aided and encouraged by the Bush administration for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy at the expense of legitimate American citizens extorted through taxation without representation to pay the bills for these barbarian hoards that have no intention of giving up their nationality and allegiance to Mexico We the People need to be told “we are not yet safe”?

Conspiracy theories abound and are given credibility because those in government are consistent in lying to We the People. Who do you know in our leadership you can depend on for the truth. They lie to gain elected office and they lie to stay in power.

I can relate from personal experience of people to little Scout's observation of Mrs. Grace Merriweather sipping gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles. It was nothing unusual for, as Scout observes, “Mrs. Merriweather's mother did the same.” And when Scout's aunt Alexandra descends on the household in order to help Scout become a lady and she is asked by Atticus how she would like her auntie staying with them, she admits, “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.”

Has it come to this, that we must accept the circumstances politicians describe as justification for their not telling the truth? But who in their right mind believes the circumstances politicians describe when we know they are liars, even lying when the truth would serve them better? Why isn’t the truth being told about the decisions these politicians make and are making bankrupting America and plunging us into fathomless debt to foreign nations like China?

Does it have to come to what one German told me of Hitler: “My family was starving before Hitler came to power. But when he was in charge of Germany we had meat and potatoes.” That man reflected the attitude of all those suffering extreme poverty that are ready to welcome any “White Knight” riding to their rescue! Sinner or Saint will then be a matter of “interpretation,” the only thing that will matter is delivering the goods, delivering the meat and potatoes.

And with our porous borders no one of any sensibility believes things regarding national security have improved since 9/11, and Katrina only served to emphasize the utter failure of government from top to bottom so far as responding to any national emergency. Our “leaders” throughout are intent on only these things: Power, profits, and saving their own backsides, a “policy” guaranteed to assure the destruction of America.

But we seek in vain to find any better leaders among Democrats than among Republicans, or any Democrats less committed than Republicans to the “Latino vote” or any less committed to betraying and selling out America while extorting legitimate American citizens to pay the bills for the invaders from Mexico and elsewhere, the result being an alarming increase in gang violence throughout America as these foreign invaders and homegrown terrorists take over entire cities like Los Angeles. Hint: “But we are not yet safe.”

Let’s see both Republicans and Democrats insisting on securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws before crediting any with having the best interests of America in mind, before crediting any with telling the truth about concerns for “national security” or the welfare of We the People as they go about campaigning calling each other names, let’s see some honesty addressing the fact Muslims and Mexicans do not assimilate; they colonize! And because neither assimilate, both are a clear and present danger to America!

Being neither naïve nor altruistic I realize we have a political system that does not offer us candidates of virtue, but only those who have made the required Mephistophelian deals in order to even mount campaigns. And whether Republican or Democrat the lesser of evils remains evil. Our problem is one of the history of politics and politicians. As Emerson pointed out who would want to be a politician when they could choose some noble occupation? Sam Clemens had it an “honest politician” was one that had not been in office long enough to sell out. Where Sam missed it was the selling out had taken place along the way to elected office.

Things have only worsened in a politically correct America where nothing can be called by its correct name, where the truth is sacrificed to the ends of those like the ACLU and La Raza that will either have an America in their image or destroy America in the process. And these organizations do so by extorting American taxpayers to foot the bill while attempting to erase everything distinctive of American heritage and culture, even attacking attempts to secure our borders, to rid ourselves of ballots printed in foreign tongues and make English our national language by law! And an evil system of politics that offers us only the choice of the lesser of evils plays directly into the hands of the enemies of America.

Such a system of government led of scoundrels that America suffers and is leading us to destruction is nothing less than diabolical. I use the term here in the dictionary sense, though it is my belief such a system that rewards scoundrels while punishing any who would speak the truth has been purposely designed and set in place by Satan.

The fault I find with those declaring “There is no God!” is their hypocritical refusal to acknowledge this as a belief, not empirical fact. I am careful to qualify my own beliefs as beliefs, not empirical facts. I believe there is a God, but I do not know there is a God. And those who deny there is a God have only their own belief about this, not fact.

For many of us it is easier to believe than to not believe. And among such believers are some of the greatest scholars and scientists the world has ever known. The qualifying term is “believers,” not “knowers.” It would serve both sides best to admit to having beliefs rather than insisting on confusing beliefs with facts whether Christian or atheist.

But no matter whether believer or unbeliever we live in a world and in an America seeming intent on self-immolation, not peace. And “diabolical” is the fitting word for this. And when disaster in the form of a terrorist nuclear bomb strikes here in America those crying for help are not going to be understanding of “Press One for English.” National disasters of such magnitude require a common language, and Mexico and Iran aren’t offering “Press One for English,” nor even “Press Two!”

In spite of all the great books and philosophers, the world has yet to attain wisdom. The undeniable truth of this being that the world has yet to know peace; and wisdom is the foundation and the source of peace. I have also noted that until women and children are included in Philosophy, in The Great Conversation on the basis of equal value to men, wisdom will remain elusive to humankind.

There have been a very small number of books that have changed the course of history but, in the end, have not led us to wisdom. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great book. It stands right there with the best of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in spite of its deceptive simplicity, a simplicity of real genius. Harper Lee did even better than these great writers, or any others such as Hawthorne, Melville, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Inge, Williams or Miller, in reaching my own heart and mind. I would be drummed out of any literature class for comparing Harper Lee with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But I don't mind. I think my comparison is a valid one.

A good book, like a good film, can become a close friend. As with Walden, To Kill a Mockingbird (the book and the film) has become one of my best and closest friends. As I love Thoreau, so I have come to love Harper Lee, little Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, Sheriff Tate… and Boo Radley.

A Pulitzer-winning novel is always deserving of special notice, so much so that they become the subjects of college and university seminars. But such a novel may not become a close friend. I maintain that Harper Lee's novel especially deserves our notice and friendship, that there are especially significant things of profound import in it that will serve us well in love and friendship, in wisdom, if they are fully understood and applied in our lives.

The genius of Harper Lee is substantially illustrated by being able to present the monumentally profound truths she was conveying in such a subtle way. The reader becomes absorbed in the simplicity of the story-telling format of the book, the simplicity of language and plot, and isn't really aware, at least not from the first reading of it, that these great truths are there. As with the genius of Emerson, the brilliance of many of these gems in TKM do not dazzle in all their brightness by the first reading, but come through by further readings; which is the evidence of a work of real genius. And the Pulitzer committee was fully aware of this, in spite of the fact that they occasionally hit the target and miss the real mark. Such was the case in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Pulitzer was given Harper Lee for all the “right” reasons. At least all the right reasons adults were capable of knowing. For example, every time I read that part of the novel or watch the scene in the film as the entire gallery of Negroes rises in silent tribute to Atticus, when Reverend Sykes tells little Scout, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your Father's passin',” the sting of tears and the lump in my throat are the evidence of what the Pulitzer Committee found in To Kill A Mockingbird.

But I believe the real mark Harper was aiming at which causes that lump to form and brings tears of another source to my eyes was the story behind the story, as I attempt to make clear. And it is this story behind the story seen through the eyes of the children, most especially little Scout, which exposes a mad guardian angel: Boo Radley. And further, makes little Scout in turn the guardian angel of a madman.

It is a commonplace of uncommon genius to be unaware of its own genius. Like all great writers, Harper Lee was inspired to write better than she knew. Because of this, together with the fact that I am able to personally relate to the era and people of which and of whom she wrote and interact with their culture, speech, and manners, I felt I had a duty to attempt to explain some things that only the little girl in Harper Lee knew and to which the little boy in me could respond, the things that are essential in leading to factual knowledge, wisdom, and peace.

I am able, for example, as a point of strictly critical literary analysis, to appreciate and understand why Harper Lee had to say “waked up” rather than awakened or awoke in the last sentence of the novel and it had to be used in the film. It takes an appreciation of the genuine charm of Southern culture and people to understand why Samuel Clemens had to say “rose up” rather than rose or arose. In this context, it led Sam to say, “Some things are unlearnable.” And when it comes to some parts of Harper Lee's masterpiece, for some people some things are, in fact, unlearnable. However, I write in the hope that the most important things she writes of are learnable to most people.

I can relate from personal experience of people to little Scout's observation of Mrs. Grace Merriweather sipping gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles. It was nothing unusual for, as Scout observes, “Mrs. Merriweather's mother did the same.” And when Scout's aunt Alexandra descends on the household in order to help Scout become a lady and she is asked by Atticus how she would like her auntie staying with them, she admits, “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.”

Regardless her tender years, Scout is no fool. So when the reader encounters my remarks about the innocence of childhood, I am not talking about children’s innocence of the foibles of life that come with the territory of childhood, or a lack of the common sense observations on the part of children regarding adults. As Scout remarks of adults by trying to comfort Dill at one place in the book, “They don't get around to doin' what they say they're gonna do half the time.”

Children maintain their marvelous innocent wisdom in spite of such things, in spite of their keen observation of adults that early begins to acquaint children with unfairness, injustice, and the typical hypocrisies practiced by adults; and taught to children as they grow.

A truly great book, because it is inspired, is in turn an inspiration to thinking people. It causes such people to analyze many things to which such a book relates. There are lessons to be learned from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Of great encouragement to me was the comment of a gracious lady eighty years of age who recently told me that my remarks on To Kill a Mockingbird had given her some new insights, and thanked me. This is high praise and I felt rightly humbled by it. And I once more took stock of the truth of the phrase: You are never too old to learn. But as we talked, we shared the fact that longevity is no guarantee of wisdom any more than it is a guarantee of continued marriage, only an opportunity. And at no point in life can we fold our hands and say “That's all there is.”

Those fathers who are blessed as I am with daughters learn things about women not learnable in any other fashion. The intriguing little creatures are, undoubtedly, unquestionably, from another planet. I am so taken by little Scout because she is so very much like my little girls Diana and Karen. They grew up; but daughters, unlike sons, never grow up to fathers. They always remain a father's little girls. But because they were little aliens, I often found myself torn between cuddling my girls and treating them with the courteous detachment described of Atticus. I don't believe a man ever learns quite how to act with or around his little girls. Not surprising since they come from another planet.

And as did my little girls, my little angels, of me Scout required a great deal of understanding from Atticus. Harper Lee did a terrific job as a woman trying to make Atticus appear understanding. But since men will never be able to think as women about some things and vice versa she has Maudie in frustration exclaiming to Atticus at one point, “Atticus, you're never going to raise those children!”

Harper Lee did portray Atticus as a father any little girl might envy any child having as a father; particularly in a home missing a mother, and we should face the fact that there are some things only mothers can do. Harper Lee has Scout make the observation at one point that her father “tried to do something that only women can do.” Scout was correct; there are some things that only women can do. But Harper Lee did not intend this as a criticism of men; she understood very well her own limitations as a woman when it comes to things only a man can do.

Things are difficult enough for children when a parent dies and the other is left alone to do the job, as was Atticus. But divorce is quite another thing, and easy divorce together with children born out of wedlock has done more damage to children by far than anything else in American society! Children are not thrown into turmoil of allegiance between a dead parent and a living one; children are not left wondering as with divorce what terrible thing they did that drove their parents apart. And their natural fathers, compared to stepfathers, are not nearly as inclined to molest their little girls and boys as too often happens because of divorce and the resulting stepfathers and other strangers brought into the lives of children.

But in respect to things that only women can do, this is by no means to say that there are not things only men can do. And Harper Lee gives due recognition to this. It takes two parents to really do the job. I know this. But my girls always seemed to need a father in a very special way that could never be found in a mother. Harper Lee makes this clear. The biological facts of a mother and father concerned with differing roles and needs are there of course; but there is far more to it than this, things of a nearly mystical significance in regard to little girls and their fathers.

One of the results of the way a little girl can really get into a father's heart differently than boys is that fathers have an especially difficult time in disciplining girls. I was basic with my boys. No slack. But the girls? As a man, I knew my little girls were prey, and boys and men the predators. Naturally, this made me far more protective of my little girls. The boys rightly perceived the girls got special treatment and consideration from me. I was afraid for my girls more than for my boys.

Tragically, we have evolved into a society that approves, even encourages, early sexual activity. And no matter how you may love your children, despite the fact that such early sexual activity is destructive to girls especially, no lone parent can overcome such insanity of an entire nation's approving this destruction of our little girls and the babies resulting from this insanity.

As parents, you can sit your little girl or boy down and tell them: Early sex is wrong! But society is telling them it is perfectly normal, natural, and if it feels good, do it no matter what your mom and dad say! And these days, since parents have no way of legally enforcing discipline and responsibility, your child may very well do as they want without fear of repercussions or any consequences.

It has always been the peculiar madness of kings to consider themselves wise by virtue of position. Quite often the delusion of position becomes, in such thinking, the equal of wisdom. But lunatic kings are well known to populate history. The leadership of America indulges this kind of lunacy. In too many cases, some among the leadership of America have proven they do not cherish our children. This leadership would continue in the insanity that children can be encouraged in early sexual relationships without consequence.

Too many men would like to maintain the status quo of it being a man's world, a world without the equal influence and value of women or the emphasis on cherishing children. This has created some peculiar thinking on the part of little girls. At one point in the novel, Scout starts using the words “hell” and “damn.” She thinks this will motivate her father to allow her to stop going to school. She has been having some real problems in school and tells Atticus she is picking up such language from this source. Hearing such words from Scout, Uncle Jack says to her, “You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?” To which Scout replies, “Not particularly.”

Scout is only about seven years old at this point in the novel. Lacking a mother, she is influenced more by her father, Jem, and Dill than by girls and women, and at this time in her life isn't particularly impressed by the role of ladies in her world. In fact, Scout describes her attitude about becoming a lady in the following words when her aunt comes to visit with this express mission of transforming Scout in mind, “I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away.”

Harper Lee does a magnificent job in pointing out some of the failures of the schools in attempts at “innovative designs” in teaching and learning, beginning way back in the 30s. Little Scout reacts to this by wanting to get out of going to school. As she views the situation, she “doesn't think the state of Alabama really intends her to go through twelve years of unrelieved boredom.”

Scout thinks events like Burris Ewell's squishing the cooties from his filthy, unwashed hair between his fingers and threatening their first grade teacher and calling her a sl-- might make school mildly entertaining. But she rightly perceives her school obviously isn't an institution genuinely intended for teaching children; but as a place of incarceration and to learn words like “hell” and “damn,” words only excused and acceptable in polite society from pulpits.

Scout fights and is always ready with her fists. Lacking a mother to settle disputes with Jem, she and her brother are quick to fight. She splits the skin of a knuckle on a cousin who calls her father a “n----- lover” and a disgrace to the family because of his defending Tom Robinson in court.

At one point early in the book, Scout describes her relationship with Dill in the following manner: He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, and then he neglected me. I beat him up twice, but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. Which only proves some lessons of childhood do not always carry over into adulthood.

Scout lived in dread of being called, “Only a girl.” She realized she was a girl… but not just “Only” a girl. It took a lot for Scout without the support of a mother to sort things out to the point where she had the feminine wisdom of a little girl only eight years old to become the little lady who would refuse to lead Boo Radley to his home by the hand, to make him, for his sake, offer her his arm as a gentleman to a lady.

The film does not tell you of a madman's whispered plea to little Scout “Will you take me home?” The film doesn't go into the thought processes of little Scout's realizing that while she could lead Boo by the hand like a child through their house and out to their porch where the Sheriff and her father are discussing the situation surrounding the killing of the evil Ewell, once she took him home in view of neighbors she has to insist on Boo offering his arm to her and on their walking together like a lady and gentleman; the gentleman escorting the lady.

Harper Lee focuses on children. But filmmakers knew an epic four hours or more in length about children wouldn't be saleable. And it would take a film of that length to even begin to do justice to the whole story. A film concentrating on sex and violence at epic length; Yes. Children; No.

And it would take a film of epic length to achieve what Harper Lee did in her novel culminating with Scout walking Boo home in such a fashion. Perhaps Harper Lee herself didn't fully realize she had achieved the zenith of the romance of wisdom in describing this the way she did? I wonder if anyone ever commented on this to her? Whether or not, I have to believe this was the effect she was aiming for all along, consciously or not.

It seems to me the deepest part of Harper Lee’s heart went into this part of the book, that at this point in her novel she exposed her innermost desire and yearning as a woman for the purity and nobility of the real love and romance of the wisdom of childhood. She not only wanted this for little Scout, she wanted it for all little girls and for all the women such little girls would become; just as she wanted to make it plain that little girls like Scout, exercising the skill of being girls, were necessary for boys like Jem to grow into men like Atticus. And I don't doubt those on the Pulitzer committee were moved by the way Harper closed her novel in such a fashion. But it isn't the kind of thing men like to talk about or even admit to recognizing.

Children like Scout epitomize the love and romance of wisdom. And it attracts the monsters that prey on children like Scout, monsters in the form of men like the evil Ewell that would destroy such innocence because they hate it so! It clearly and indelibly exposes these cowardly, bullying monsters for what they are! My comments about this culminating part of the novel should not be taken as denigrating the film; rightly acclaimed a great film. When I was asked to do a book signing of this critique of at Russo’s Books because of the novel being featured through the Bakersfield reading program I willingly agreed. But this brought to mind the fact most knew of the novel only through the film version, and had the scriptwriters and editors known it was destined to be named one of the most influential films of all time they would have paid much more attention to what they were doing and not allowed some of the poorly done scenes and glaring inaccuracies and contradictions to slip by them.

However, lacking prescience those responsible for the final cut of the film did not pay attention to these details and it suffered accordingly. But the timing of the film brought it much critical acclaim despite its weaknesses, and was it not for Lawrence of Arabia might have won the award for best picture. There is no discounting the film deserving the praise heaped upon it and the honored place it now holds. But the film is far short of the real story Harper Lee told in her novel, and in my opinion is the reason she never wrote again though TKM now holds the position held by many as the best novel of the twentieth century.

Like all great theater, books, art, and films, the film version of TKM due to the many artistic achievements in it makes certain demands on viewers. But my criticism of the film still stands. It exaggerates the adult view to the minimizing, and at times ignoring, that of the real emphasis and importance of the book. To this extent, the film can rightly be called superficial compared to the book itself. But this just criticism does not take away from the greatness, the value of the film in its own right.

Having said that, I still emphasize the fact that to have only seen the film is to miss the real import and significance of the book, an import and significance that moves me to place it right alongside Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. For example, the film does not address the following except in the most superficial way: At what point in a little girl's life does she begin to realize as Scout did that there might be some skill involved in being a girl? And more, when she begins to realize that she wishes to be a lady instead of “Not particularly?”

As Eliza Doolittle pointed out in My Fair Lady, if you treat a flower girl like a Duchess, you give her the opportunity to respond and act like a Duchess. And as Scout was to discover, it often takes a little lady, a little Duchess, to make a gentleman.

When Jem begins to enter the age of adolescence, he is increasingly aware of his responsibility to Scout as the older brother. Harper Lee does a wonderful job of describing this transition and Scout's quite normal resentment of the change in Jem, of the change in their relationship as brother and sister. In contrast to Jem's earlier accusing Scout of acting more like a girl all the time is Jem beginning to tell her to act more like a girl, something very confusing to Scout and quite understandably a source of resentment.

It was bad enough to be lacking the “talent” to compete with Jem and Dill after the children's unexpectedly surreptitious observation of Mr. Avery's “awesome performance” when emptying his bladder; but Scout had to begin to accept some of the other facts of life that had “condemned her” to being only a girl. But Scout is learning. And there are those like Maudie and Calpurnia to help her during this transitional period, to help her begin to understand and appreciate “there might be some skill involved in being a girl.”

Little did Scout realize, nor could she, how greatly boys and men are in such desperate need of the skill involved in her being a girl. She is beginning to acquire a dim understanding of this, however, when she thinks to herself that Atticus needs her presence, help and advice: “Why, he couldn't get along a day without me,” she thinks to herself at one point. Atticus has made his love for his little girl so plain to her that she feels important and needed by him. That, gentle reader, is successful parenting!

But it was Scout's very skill as a girl that helped make her father the kind of man and father he was, the kind of skill that would make Jem want to be the very same kind of gentleman their father was, that would make Jem far prouder of his father as a gentleman than of his father's talent for shooting. It was this skill in being a girl that Scout was learning that encouraged Atticus to continue being a gentleman and would cause Jem to admire and respect his father and want to be exactly like him. It was this skill as a girl that would cause little Scout to both understand Sheriff Tate's verdict regarding Boo, and refuse to lead Boo home by the hand. And it would be this skill as a girl that would defuse and disperse a lynch mob.

It does seem at times that the world itself seems a lynch mob that can only be dispersed by the saving faith of the innocent wisdom of children. If the world would only cherish its children, it wouldn't behave like a lynch mob! When those men in the mob were confronted by the best that humankind holds promise of being in the form of a little innocent girl, each individual comprising the mob had to look at himself as an individual, and once having done so conscience had no choice but to bow to that innocence, an innocence in which fairness and justice rule with wisdom and where the Beast has no place of concealment; this monster is exposed and laid bare to those all-knowing pure eyes found reflecting the wisdom of an innocent little girl.

If the wisdom of childhood had ruled in that court and jury box, Tom Robinson would have been restored to his wife and children. But Scout had saved her father from being harmed; she had saved Tom Robinson from being lynched. At that, it took the goodness of her brother Jem insisting on standing by his father to give Scout a chance to innocently confront the mob. But Jem alone could not have prevented violence. Only the skill of a little girl could do that. This is one of the things that separate girls and boys into what should be honored as the compatibility of differences.

Harper Lee knew with her feminine wisdom that men make war, while women attempt to make homes. Women do not bear children with the idea of sacrificing them on the altar of the wars that men make. If it had only been Jem and Dill there with Atticus to confront the mob this would not have worked. The all-male makeup of such a mob would only have acerbated the situation. Harper Lee understood this. As a woman, she knew it would take the skill of a little girl, little Scout, to defuse the situation because “there are some things that only women can do.” Or, in this case, only a little girl could do.

This whole scene illustrates one of the most profound characteristics of wisdom. It is one thing to speak of wisdom being comprised of love, compassion, and an instinctive hatred of evil. Atticus and Jem are incorporating all the aspects of wisdom in confronting the lynch mob. But one thing is lacking: The wisdom of that other half of humankind, women, without which wisdom is incomplete.

It is that part of wisdom, the instinctive hatred of evil that little Scout so well represents in a way that only an innocent little girl can, that accomplishes confronting the mob peacefully and successfully. Atticus and Jem know full well the evil the mob represented. But little Scout is innocent of this. As a consequence, her knowledge and confrontation of the evil is totally, purely innocent! And victorious! This is wisdom in action; this is wisdom at its best!

Once the mob confronts itself as individuals in the face of such representative innocent knowledge and instinctive hatred of evil as little Scout so well exemplifies, the mob will look into its heart on an individual basis and forsake its psychotic lunacy and return to sanity. The melding of knowledge and wisdom is accomplished, and peace is the result.

But the world lacking wisdom, neither Scout, nor Jem, nor Atticus could save Tom Robinson from a caste system and perverted judicial system of evil constructed stone by stone and brick by brick through the determined and dedicated labors of evil men. In fact, women were not even permitted at the time to serve on juries in Alabama and some other states.

In the case of Tom Robinson, it was a system that forced even good people into a no-win situation. If the jury found Tom Robinson innocent, it would be calling two Caucasians liars against the word of a Negro. Unthinkable! The good people of that jury would be ostracized from their own society! And only madmen (and children) are capable of confronting the kind of “sanity” that leaves good people in this insane no-win position.

The system of the 30s that condemned Tom Robinson hasn't really changed all that much. And until good people get together to confront it, it isn't likely to change much. At least, it won't change as long as good people are too busy to be involved in confronting injustice, too busy to be politically active; and as a result, too busy to be free.

When that good man Sheriff Tate rendered his verdict that the evil Bob Ewell fell on his knife, that it would be a sin to tell the truth, then abruptly leaves, Atticus looks at Scout and says to her (this in the book, not in the film), “Scout, Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”

Scout runs to him and hugs him and kisses him with all her might. She says to her father, “Mr. Tate was right.” When Atticus asks her what she means she replies, “Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?”

As parents, we are never really sure of what our children understand of adult thinking. Little Scout is only eight years old now; but she remembers what her father had said two years before about it being a sin to shoot a mockingbird. Another loving and responsible adult in the children’s lives, Miss Maudie, reinforced this. And Scout is able to make the connection between this and the way fairness and justice could be best served in the case of the madman who has saved her and Jem's lives.

The main concern of a loving father was that his children would misunderstand; how they might perceive the excusing of what amounted to vigilante justice in the case of Boo Radley killing the evil Ewell in order to save them. But Scout does understand. To tell the town that Boo had actually plunged the knife into the evil Ewell would, indeed, be a sin as Sheriff Tate had said, and a sin he refused to have on his conscience. And children know far more of actual sin than do adults. It takes the innocence of a child to really recognize sin for what it is with an instinctive hatred of it recognizing the evil of it; and in the two cases of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley the hateful sin of killing a mockingbird.

A madman had balanced the scales of justice and Scout understands this as only a child is capable of understanding it. Atticus had nothing to fear on this score. There would be no taint of hypocrisy to come back to haunt him in his relationship with his little girl. And it must have reassured him further to know his little girl had every bit, and more, the sense of fairness and justice he had himself.

An obvious conundrum presents itself in spite of this. Jem and Scout will be able to understand the necessity of not telling about Boo. But the case of Tom Robinson remains. That a madman served the cause of justice is something children can understand and accept. But for adults, it remains vigilante justice. The law required telling of Boo killing Ewell in order to save the children, and the Sheriff and Atticus are civilized representatives of the law.

But these outstanding civilized representatives of the law could not save Tom Robinson. And they could not prevent the evil Ewell from stalking and murdering the children. Only a madman could do this and not be hauled before the bar of “justice” for doing so. However, given the option of having all the ladies in Maycomb knocking on Boo's door and bringing him angel food cakes, Sheriff Tate and Atticus had only one choice: To ignore the law, to, in fact, become lawbreakers themselves!

Scout understands and accepts what was done in the case of Boo. She will never be able to understand and accept what happened in the case of Tom Robinson! We will applaud the vigilante with the fast gun who comes in and cleans up the town. But we refuse to face the fact that it is perverted laws too often based on ignorance and prejudice that make such a thing necessary! And as long as the vigilante remains necessary and is applauded, so long will the world lack wisdom. So long will Scout be unable to understand what happened to Tom Robinson!

I need to repeat something in order to make a point. Please bear with me:

When the jury in the novel, because of ingrained, ignorant prejudice, finds Tom Robinson guilty of a crime he so very obviously did not commit, Dill and Jem cry. Scout would have cried if she had been just a little older. She was just old enough to realize a great injustice had been perpetrated, but still young enough to not understand and cry about it. She would learn to cry about such things later.

And when Jem asks his father how the jury could have done such a thing, his father tells him in words affirming the observation by Mr. Raymond to the children about injustice, “I don't know ... when they do it - seems only children weep.”

It is, once more, the wisdom of the child that Harper Lee brings out so clearly, so vividly.

The point I want to emphasize from the above is how brutal it is to betray the innocent wisdom of a child. To betray in such ways that a child does, eventually, lose the wisdom and ability to weep over unfairness and injustice. And I could weep thinking of how little Scout will be forced when she grows up to deal with the difference between what happened to Boo Radley and what happened to Tom Robinson.

As a man I have to confess that had I not had daughters I would never have paid that much attention to the lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird, I wouldn't be nearly as sensitive to the lessons men need to learn from children and women. But when it comes to trying to convince most women to take an active role in being examples of the lessons Harper Lee teaches in spite of the attempts of men to “keep women in their place,” a place of lesser value than men, in most cases I find myself preaching to an empty auditorium.

The Equal Rights Amendment was a doomed effort, a failed experiment in equality because women had it wrong. They should have concentrated on the children first. Until children become the priority of America, nothing else is going to work. Which only proves it isn't men alone that are the problem.

There is no royal path to knowledge. And most certainly not to wisdom. In spite of the efforts of pundits and Brookings, SRI, etc., no think-tank has come up with the equation Knowledge plus Wisdom equals Peace (k+w=p). The think tanks too often excel in stating the obvious and muddying the waters, in missing the forest for the trees. The reason for this failure of such vaunted institutions is, in fact, obvious: They don't consider, or concentrate on, women and children as of equal value to men. For such institutions, it is business as usual by not including women in The Great Conversation.

We desperately need the skill of all the little Scouts in being girls; we need to give all little girls the chance to learn and develop this skill, to give all children the chance to develop all the skills of childhood. For example, there is no more precious line in To Kill a Mockingbird than the one Harper Lee uses to describe Jem's concern for Scout during her first day at school. It is his little sister's first recess and Jem is checking on her to see how she is doing. Harper Lee has little Scout describe it in these words, “Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the schoolyard.”

Only a woman could and would describe this action of Jem by such a precious phrase in such a precious way. Harper Lee had obviously acquired the skill of being a girl. And this is so very evident from this special line in the book, together with her sensitivity to all the things little Scout represents of the best of girlhood and its civilizing impact in bringing out the best of boyhood.

Every little girl needs to be cut from the covey by one who loves and cares for her, and demonstrates it by doing so. Little girls are designed of God to bring out the best in boys and men, to cause them to cut little girls from the covey when they need to be. It is a demonstrative form of cherishing.

When a man chooses a wife, he is to cut her from the covey and cherish her. But the woman had better have learned the necessary skill of being a girl while she is a child or it isn't going to happen. I’m a man, but I have learned and know at least this much about women. But there is an important fact to be considered in this: The women who do not want any responsibility in the decision-making process. It is a convenient way to make sure men always get the blame when things go wrong. This was the problem with the ERA. Women wanted to save their cake and to eat it too.

And the ERA did point out a fatal flaw in the thinking of people, both men and women, throughout the whole of history; and one which is crucial to my point that the world has always been lacking in wisdom: The fact that the issue is not equal or civil rights; it is an issue of Equal Value!

Why should any group be asking, even demanding, equal rights when no amount of legislation will make such groups equal in fact; something that Lincoln himself recognized. Such a thing demands a change in hearts and minds, something no amount of laws attempting to force such a thing will accomplish; but, on the contrary, often counterproductively acerbates the situation and contributes to further hardening of hearts and minds!

It isn't that just laws are not needed for the sake of equality and justice; only a fool would deny this. Quite obviously such laws are absolutely essential. But what is needed is the making of children such a priority in our nation that we will raise a generation of children in protected and cherished innocence, and in such a manner that the ugliness of bigotry and prejudice will find no soil in which to take root! Then, and only then, will wisdom assert itself by our concentrating the effort of an entire nation on making children the priority they must become in order to accomplish the ideal of eliminating the hatreds of bigotry and prejudice infecting America and the world!

As to wanting to save their cake and eat it too, men are no different from women in this respect, and there is always the message of To Kill a Mockingbird to confront. As a man, there is always my former life to confront no matter how I try to bury it. And I may get away from this during the day when the sun is shining, but when I lay my head on my pillow in the darkness it is still there. It is at such a time I think of what little Dill said when Scout asks him, “Why do you reckon Boo Radley's never run off?” Dill replies, “Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to.”

The record of humankind is one of blaming God, regardless of the religion or beliefs, for our own lack of wisdom and failing to confront and overcome evil, to blame God and others rather than taking personal responsibility for the evil in the world. The world has never had the wisdom to overcome the case of Tom Robinson. As I said, Scout could accept the wisdom of not telling about Boo Radley being the mad guardian angel of the children. It would, indeed, have been “sort of like shootin' a mockingbird.”

But the case of Tom Robinson remained. And still remains. It always has. What Scout could never be asked to understand was what constituted the real difference between Boo Radley and Tom Robinson? We can credit that jury and the society it represented in the case of Tom Robinson with sanity or we must charge them with insanity. You don't try to explain this to a child whose own wisdom cannot possibly credit those responsible for the death, actually the murder of Tom Robinson being the action of sane and civilized people. To a child, such a thing is obviously uncivilized and insane!

Boo Radley: The madman who acted with sanity because his kind of insanity made children his priority. And children must become the priority of our nation. Until this is done, the case of Tom Robinson remains unresolved and insane. Not just for Scout and Jem, not just for 1935 in Maycomb, Alabama, but throughout the entire world throughout all of history, and throughout the world today.

If Americans are more concerned and interested in only the materialism of life than children, if Americans continue to believe it is God's job and not theirs to protect children, so long will the case of Tom Robinson remain unresolved, so long will the little Scouts be unable to make sense of it all. And so long will the evil Ewells be the cause of injustice for the Tom Robinsons and continue to be the stalkers, molesters and murderers of children.

Boo Radley was mad. But he loved the children. It is the coldest winter night in memory and has actually snowed during the day. This was such a rare thing Scout thought it was the end of the world, having never seen snow before.

Miss Maudie's house catches fire, and while it burns the children are standing outside in the freezing cold because of the threat to their own house. Boo, unnoticed by anyone, slips out of his dark tomb and places a blanket around the shoulders of little Scout as she stands numb and shivering from the extreme, below-freezing temperature. She was totally unaware of his doing so, and it isn't until they were all safely back inside their own house that Atticus notices the blanket and they all realize the source.

Like you, I watch the pictures of the suffering of those children forced to flee from the atrocities being committed in places like Kosovo. I watch pictures of the starving, suffering children in Africa and elsewhere, and, like you, I cannot help being grateful to God that they are not my children. But don't you wish there were some Boo Radleys, mad guardian angels, to put blankets over the shivering shoulders of those children?

But the children were Boo's self-assumed responsibility and priority. And if all adults were as insane as Boo Radley, those children we see suffering wouldn't be in such a case. However, whether in Kosovo, Africa, America, or any other place in the world children will continue to suffer so long as adults continue to make their beliefs and prejudices, the acquisition of material things the priority rather than the children.

Incredibly, in just this century, in just my own lifetime there have been two world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, wars in the Middle East and in Iraq still on-going, atrocities are being committed in Moslem nations, Europe and elsewhere that have not been witnessed since the Stalin/Hitler era!

India and Pakistan are rattling their nuclear sabers. China and North Korea are expanding their military capabilities and Japan is understandably very worried about this. There is the constant threat in the Middle East between Jews and Moslems. Africa and Indonesia are fractured with unrest. In all of this, the very real danger of #92 of the periodic table looms large as physicist Michio Kaku, among many others, warns in his book Visions.

Do we face extinction as a species simply because we failed to acquire the wisdom of making children the priority of nations? The warning is implicit and brooks no dispute: No nation that fails to cherish its young has a future as a nation! Nor does a world that refuses to do so.

I know this much: Boo had it right. Those who consider themselves sane and still allow children to suffer do not. We are going to have to do better than this if we are not going to destroy ourselves!

The insanity of war will continue as long as people throughout the world continue in selfish ignorance, bigotry, and prejudice to teach children to believe they are better than others are on the basis of race, religion, or politics, to hate those who are different from themselves, as long as people put their racial, religious, and political ideologies above the welfare of children: All children!

When little Dill runs away from home it is because his folks were indifferent to him; it was because they didn't show him they genuinely cared about him. They bought him the toys and told him: Now, go play and leave us alone! Indifference to our children can result in their becoming monsters, a curse rather than a blessing.

If people wonder that children feel this keenly and act accordingly, it only proves they don't give any thought to the problem. And it is a problem of immense magnitude! As a society, we have proven to our children that we are indifferent to them. We have bought them the toys and told them “Go play and leave us alone!”

We are going to have to change! We are going to have to prove to our children we do care about them!

When I was asked to do a book signing of my critique of To Kill A Mockingbird at Russo’s Books because of the novel being featured through the Bakersfield reading program I willingly agreed. But this brought to mind the fact most knew of the novel only through the film version, and had the scriptwriters and editors known it was destined to be named one of the most influential films of all time they would have paid much more attention to what they were doing and not allowed some of the poorly done scenes and glaring inaccuracies and contradictions to slip by them.

However, lacking prescience those responsible for the final cut of the film did not pay attention to these details and it suffered accordingly. But the timing of the film brought it much critical acclaim despite its weaknesses, and were it not for Lawrence of Arabia might have won the award for best picture.

There is no discounting the film deserving the praise heaped upon it and the honored place it now holds. But the film is far short of the real story Harper Lee told in her novel, and in my opinion is the reason she never wrote again. This needs some explanation from the opening chapter of my critique:

Chapter one

The weather is moderating here in the Kern River Valley around Lake Isabella. It has been a beautifully mild day with abundant and glorious sunshine. This evening after sundown, I was able to take a turn around the grounds of my little cottage. An occasional bat would flit about the oaks while a coyote barked in the distance and was answered by some closer neighbor's hound. Doves, quail, and other assorted birds had roosted for the night. It was time for the bats, raccoons, skunks, owls, and other nocturnal occupants of this small corner of my world to take their turn in company with me and begin their rounds.

The soft mildness of the evening following the mild weather of the day was a real tonic to me. It was good to be able to be outdoors so late and enjoy the reflective mood such weather and such an evening always calls me to. For some reason, I found my mind dwelling on Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

As I watched the first stars begin to appear, a slight, night breeze began to stir the leaves of the trees with enough hint of a chill to remind me that winter had not yet had its full say. In fact, a storm is being forecast for this weekend.

I most reluctantly went back inside, pausing only to look up once more at the stars through the now black-silhouetted branches of the tall old pine next to the cottage, and settled down to the writing.

My favorite non-fiction book is Thoreau's Walden. My favorite novel is To Kill a Mockingbird. It, together with Walden, occupies a space on the table next to my bed. And perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to give both books to college graduates along with their diplomas.

One reason for my keeping Harper Lee's wonderful and masterful novel so close at hand is the fact that I was a contemporary of the era Miss Lee describes; and I was born into, and raised in, the identical culture with the identical kinds of people straight out of the Dust Bowl and Grapes of Wrath with the identical ignorance and prejudices all around me (and diet and idiomatic dialect), described in the novel, which is not to discount the very best of civilized manners and behavior portrayed by Harper Lee characteristic of the South.

And thanks to my maternal great-grandmother and grandparents, I am most familiar with the best of the values, sense of justice and fairness, good manners, and civilized behavior so characteristic of the best of Southern people like Atticus Finch. And I am ever grateful loving people so representative of him raised me. But I am also well acquainted with what cruel poverty and ignorance can do to any people of whatever culture or race.

I repeatedly watch the film as well as read the novel, never tiring of the film with its marvelous score by Elmer Bernstein nor failing to gain inspiration from hearing the little girl's singing to herself, and her happy, giggling laughter during the introduction of the film, for there is no sweeter and joyful music this side of heaven than a child's singing and laughter. And I don't doubt God chooses children for His heavenly choir.

The poignant, heart-tugging scene of a little girl drawing, and tearing, her crayon picture of the mockingbird accompanied by her singing and laughter, is an unforgettable adumbration of the events to follow, the ugly events in contradiction to the singing and laughter of children which have been, without let throughout human history, so successful in inevitably stifling, silencing, the voice of children's singing and laughter.

God knows how badly, how desperately, children (and adults) need the Miss Maudies and Calpurnias, the Heck Tates and Atticus Finches! And we desperately need them far more than all the great men and women of history, far more than all the great philosophers and artists of history, none of whom, including all the manufactured deities, messiahs, religions and prophets, have provided the wisdom that would deliver the world from the continued abuse and murder of children or led the world to peace.

Few people know of Harper Lee's childhood association and friendship with another child, Truman Capote, and her using that childhood friendship in her novel. For that matter, few seem to know that Miss Lee's first name is Nelle. But when I first read the book so many years ago (it was published in 1960), and then saw the film starring Gregory Peck, it never occurred to me that a madman, Boo Radley, would become so influential and important to me.

Long before I was able to fully appreciate the true social implications of the book, I was taken by the charm of childhood Miss Lee made so convincingly real through the eyes of little Scout. Nor was I aware when I first read the book that I would be going through a similar metamorphosis as Miss Lee in my own writing, trying to awaken the child both in myself and in others.

For those who have seen the film but never read the book, you have cheated yourself of some of the most important points that make it a truly great story told in a masterful way, and you will never be able to understand how truly powerful the message of the story is; a message told in such a way that removes it far from being the usual morality play. And told in such a way as to be so very deserving of the Pulitzer Prize Miss Lee was awarded.

But what the film did not do was capture Harper Lee’s real, authentic South in many ways she does in the book. This is not to denigrate the film, for the film is recognized by all as great in its own way. But the film is very, very far from the whole story Miss Lee has told in the book, a story that in its entirety was worthy and deserving of the Pulitzer. The film, while addressing the monumentally important issues of racial prejudice and injustice, could not, due to its brevity, tell the whole story in spite of Peck's Oscar-winning performance. But I will always believe little Mary Badham should have received an Oscar for her role as Scout. At least she was nominated.

This makes me think of Judy Garland’s Oscar for her part as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. And Judy certainly deserved the award, though it was given for the special category of Best Performance in a Juvenile Role. But in 1939 we Americans were much more given to the joy and laughter of children in those decades past. There was Snow White for example in 1938 as a precedent for the marvelous fantasy of Oz. And I often ask myself when I reflect on those years past, where did we as a society lose our love for children, our love for the joy and laughter of the children and the joy and laughter they used to bring to adults?

I do know that in 1939 we knew the magic of childhood and music, and honored it in a way that was no longer possible in 1962. The song Somewhere Over A Rainbow in Oz won an Oscar; It Might as Well be Spring in State Fair of 1945 won an Oscar for best song; but in the 60s and thereafter? We seemed to have lost our way as a nation and the music of the laughter of children, the music of the ideals of love and romance declined making way for the cacophony of noise that is called “music” today.

As is common with great writers I believe Harper Lee wrote better than she knew when she used a madman to balance the scales of justice. Certainly she knew this of the children and Boo Radley, of Tom Robinson, and the evil Mr. Ewell. But that such a madman as Boo would be needed to balance the scales of justice for the children of the world against all the Ewells?

The whole point of such “madness” is to free children so that boys can be gentlemen and girls can be ladies. And this is the responsibility of madmen, not madwomen, since it is men who bear the primary guilt of the decisions that prevent children from becoming ladies and gentlemen; it is disproportionately men that are responsible for the laws passed that either protect children, or protect the monsters that prey upon children. But what inept civilized law and law-abiding citizens could not do in confronting evil with determination to win in order to protect children, only a madman could and would do.

Mr. Dolphus Raymond does not appear in the film. After all, the makers of the film were not thinking in terms of saving the children of the world. Their attention was on the adult issue of racism, apparently not realizing, or ignoring, the fact that racism is a children's issue long before it becomes an adult issue. But to let the reader know how important the real point of the novel is, here is an excerpt as little Scout relates it of Mr. Raymond:

I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated a fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with his deepest secret? I asked him why.

“Because you're children and you can understand it,” he said,” and because I heard that one—“

He jerked his head toward Dill: “Things haven't caught up with that one's instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won't get sick and cry. Maybe things'll strike him as being - not quite right, say, but he won't cry, not when he gets a few years on him.”

“Cry about what, Mr. Raymond?” Dill's maleness was beginning to assert itself.

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people too.”

Harper Lee knew that there were things children understand that adults don't. She knew children weep over injustice and lose this wisdom as they grow into adulthood. Adults excuse this loss, this forsaking of wisdom, by claiming it is a part of growing up, a part of the real world, never realizing that their real world is a world of their choosing and making, a world that has ever failed to attain unto wisdom, the wisdom they, in fact, had as children. And the forsaking of such wisdom contributes so much to this loss in the resulting failure of good people to confront injustice, to confront evil with absolute determination to win!

Harper Lee, since she was very well educated, prefaces her book with a quote from one of my favorite essayists, Charles Lamb: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

Granting the difficulty we face in giving lawyers any credibility of being children once, Miss Lee nevertheless chose Atticus Finch, the model for whom was her own father, as the preeminent humanitarian and a man who even as a lawyer kept the best part of the child alive in himself.

But Atticus had the extreme good fortune of having little Scout (Jean Louise) to keep him honest. It is Scout who, innocently, and because of such innocence that must be cherished, is the best part of her father's life and compels him to stand up and be counted for truth and justice. Being a good man, how could he ever betray such believing and saving faith, trust, and innocence as that of his little girl!

I haven't forgotten Jem (Jeremy) in this. But Jem is growing up. And Miss Lee gives Jem a lot of credit for his own sense of truth and justice. But Harper Lee knows how little girls differ from little boys. As she has Scout say at one point, “I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.”

Harper Lee epitomizes the need to include women and children in The Great Conversation: Philosophy, the King of Disciplines. There is indeed some skill involved in being a girl. And boys and men are in desperate need of such skill on the part of girls and women. The constant refusal on the part of men, who were once little boys, to accept women and children as of equal value to themselves is at the heart of the problem which has kept the world at war and without wisdom, and as a result without peace, throughout history.

Harper Lee must have recognized this. But it must not have been as conscious to her as a grown woman as it was to her as a little girl. And how could it be otherwise when men still exclude women and children from The Great Conversation?

To say she has forgotten is not a criticism of Harper Lee. The little boy in me is far more aware than the man of the things Harper Lee’s little girl knows that she had forgotten as a woman, the things that are in fact the well-spring of intimations and hope of immortality.

I mentioned the social implications of Harper Lee's novel. But what was the real impact? Certainly it had an impact on me. Both because of my own background and because it wasn't long after the book was published that I found myself teaching in Watts at Jordan High.

The results of the Watts riot were fully in evidence and I was a part of the whole milieu of that time in our history. You might say I was at Ground Zero during the 60s. But decades after the riots, what has changed for the better? Nothing. If anything, things have only gotten worse in respect to Negroes in America; and for children, the future of America and the world.

Riots and rhetoric, films like To Kill a Mockingbird, A Woman Called Moses, Mississippi Burning, Ghosts of Mississippi, A Time to Kill, The Tuskegee Airmen, Miss Evers' Boys, and Amistad, have not changed things for the better. And the world lacking wisdom, with evil seeming to be ever in the ascendancy how can they? Nor can Hollywood have it both ways; pretending to fight discrimination on the one hand and hypocritically supporting violence and perversion on the other.

Nor can we ignore the fact that so many Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning works have failed to make any substantial changes for the better, including To Kill a Mockingbird. But to quote the Chicago Tribune (one of many sources of praise) about the book: “Of rare excellence ... a novel of strong contemporary national significance.” A reviewer for the Minneapolis Tribune wrote: “The reader will find ... a desire, on finishing it, to start over again on page one.”

And so I have; many times.

Abundant and well-deserved praise was heaped upon Harper Lee and her extraordinary novel. But far too often do great themes such as hers concerning inequities, injustices and discrimination, find the deserved applause and rewards of good people while never accomplishing the avowed goal of righting these inequities, injustices, and discrimination.

And one can go back into the furthest distant past to find the same themes being declaimed by good and wise men (there must have been equally good and wise women, but they weren't allowed a voice). There is nothing new in these themes. Yet, in spite of the great works of so many great thinkers throughout history, the world has yet to know peace. It is as Emerson noted, Socrates, Jesus, Washington left no “class,” and the disciple is never above his master. But doesn't it puzzle you, as it did me, why this should be so? Perhaps the answer may be found in the following.

In Harper Lee’s novel Tom Robinson was convicted of a crime that he obviously did not commit, and died by the ugly and hateful mechanism of racial prejudice in 1935. And sixty-three years later in 1998, more than a generation later, a Negro was dragged to death behind a truck driven by monsters posing as human beings solely on the basis of his being a Negro! What, any civilized person has to ask him or herself, has changed for the better in this respect for Negroes in the last sixty-four years to date? Or since 1960 when the novel was published?

The sustaining of racial and religious prejudice is by no means peculiar to America. It is, in fact, far, far worse in other parts of the world where Caucasians are killing Caucasians, Negroes are killing Negroes, Christians kill Christians, Moslems kill Moslems, and Jews and Moslems continue to kill each other.

Knowledge is abundant. But Wisdom is, as ever, conspicuously absent, an orphan from knowledge. Since true wisdom is derived from love and compassion with an instinctive hatred of evil, it isn't surprising that the world lacks wisdom and people continue to torture and murder for the sake of ideological differences and in the name of God. It should not be surprising that the same crimes and cruelties continue to be repeated without end in spite of all the great books and apologetics designed to overcome the hatreds, ignorance and prejudices that continue to make their contributions to an increasingly demon-haunted world.

The point that knowledge is confused for wisdom is made by even the best attempts to meld knowledge and wisdom without facing the fact that until women and children are accepted as of equal value to men, and until children become the priority of nations, wisdom will continue to be orphaned from knowledge and unachievable! Nor should it be surprising that knowledge dictates we must become wise or we will most assuredly destroy ourselves!

But at the same time we are reaching out to heaven, hell is abundant throughout the world, a world as much and even more of a demon-haunted world as it ever was on the basis of ignorant and prejudicial hatreds thousands of years old! Wisdom? Where?

Too often I find myself having to point out the obvious: If children are the closest thing to the heart of God, how is it that so many live as though there was something of greater importance? And all too often things done in the name of God are absolutely contradictory to the welfare of children! The time would fail me to list such things.

Harper Lee makes some excellent, even profound points concerning hypocrisy on the part of so many in her novel. For example, she recognizes the religious animosity toward women. That of the Moslem and Jewish religions is patently obvious. But when Harper Lee points out the preaching of the “Women are unclean and a sin by definition” doctrine of Christianity, she strikes at the heart of the matter. And most ministers would certainly get their backs up over her accusation that ministers are preoccupied with the subject. But I believe she, and all thinking people, realize why this is so.

Sex by any definition is still sex, whether cloaked in religiosity or not, whether God is profaned in the process of preaching such damnable doctrine or not. Consider how many preach women and children are of lesser value than men. Of course, men don’t come right out and say it; but it is there nonetheless. Such an abuse of religion is a bullying tactic of men, too often supported by women themselves, designed to keep women appositionally inferior to men. Such tactics led Thoreau to write:

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymnbooks resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.

While Henry put his finger on the problem, and while he had Margaret Fuller as a prime example of the equal value of women, due to the era in which they lived neither he nor his renowned friend Emerson understood nor recognized that such bullying by religion had a primary focus on women and children.

The wisdom of childhood causes children to separate from bullies if at all possible. Children will not play with bullies. And it is the bullying of religion, as much or more than that of education and politics toward women and children, that led Sam Clemens to comment, “He was as happy as though he had just gotten out of church.”

In respect to the kind of madness and bullying that seems all-pervading and prevents good people from seizing the initiative in acquiring wisdom, Harper Lee has Calpurnia telling the children, “You're not going to change any of them by talkin' right; they've got to want to learn themselves. And when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

And sure enough most do not want to learn; they not only have no interest in talkin' right, they want to bully others into talking their language no matter how ignorant or self-serving, to be polite to their idols, myths and superstitions no matter how harmful to wisdom. The worst of these insist on everyone either talkin' their language or they will mount a jihad in order to destroy anyone who does not! In spite of how very, even selfishly, ignorant their own language may be, they not only do not know better, like the ignorant Ewells of the novel, they have no interest in doing any better.

When the jury in the novel due to ingrained, ignorant prejudice find Tom Robinson guilty of a crime he so very obviously did not commit, Dill and Jem cry. Scout would have cried if she had been just a little older. She was just old enough to realize a great injustice had been perpetrated, but still young enough to not understand and cry about it. She would learn to cry about such things later. And when Jem asks his father how the jury could have done such a thing his father tells him in words affirming the observation by Mr. Raymond to the children about injustice, “I don't know ... when they do it - seems only children weep.”

It is, once more, the wisdom of the child that Harper Lee brings out so clearly, vividly, in her novel. The wisdom of the child has no prejudice. Like the song “Carefully Taught” in South Pacific it takes an adult society to teach children to hate those who are different from them. Such adult society reminds me of something Atticus says in the novel, “Naming people after Confederate general’s makes them slow steady drinkers.” And there is nothing like naming someone Pope, Reverend, Rabbi, Mullah or Ayatollah to accomplish the same result of making men drunk with their egos and self-importance.

Jem and Scout are only children. But they talk about people, about issues of life arising from the trial of Tom Robinson. They wonder why people can't get along together when Jem suddenly says to Scout, “I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time ... it's because he wants to stay inside.”

I have come to love Harper Lee; I have come to love Scout, Jem, Atticus, Maudie, and Calpurnia. I lay in bed last night pondering this and talking it over with God. Like Boo Radley, as Jem had it figured, I realize I would prefer to dissociate myself from many of those who think themselves sane. I most certainly wouldn't have gotten on with those who considered Cotton Mather a “marvelous man.”

If I could be a child again wearing my bib overalls, walking barefoot in the alkali dust of a Weedpatch or Little Oklahoma road in Southeast Bakersfield, just kickin' it once in a while to make the dust fly, enjoying the honest warmth of it between my toes and just doin' nothin', how delightful that would be. Maybe I'd be carrying my Genuine Daisy Red Ryder Lever-action Carbine BB gun, the one I earned selling garden seed and Cloverine salve door-to-door.

I was really proud of earning my Daisy Red Ryder; though it was accompanied by the usual and familiar dire threat from adults about putting out the eyes of all the children in the neighborhood. One of the mysteries of childhood was why adults thought the sole purpose of BB guns was that of shooting out the eyes of children? But, then, it did seem adults engaged in a lot of morbid preoccupations of this nature intended to either frighten or make forbidden fruits all that more desirable to children.

As I walked just doin' nothin', maybe I'd be thinking, like Scout, that there really wasn't much more to learn when I grew up than what I already knew except, possibly, algebra. And like Scout, nothing would be really scary except what I read in books.

The thing is, I have had this experience of childhood and I know what I am missing. I know and love Scout and Jem and Dill and I long to join them. I know they would welcome me. But I can't, and it makes me feel I've lived too long and know too much. There has been more to learn than algebra and I know all the scary things are not just in books.

Like Atticus of Jem and Scout, I wish I could have spared my children the pain of growing up in a world with ugly, ignorant, and hate-filled prejudices and hypocrisy, a world that has little concern for children, their future, or the monsters that prey on them. But I could no more do that than Atticus could of Jem and Scout.

I don't want to write as I do of the pain and suffering of children, I want them to play and I want to write of their playing. I want to go play as I did as a child, I want my occupation to be that of child: To play.

But the ugliness remained for Jem and Scout long after the trial of Tom Robinson. It remains today and it hurts to imagine Jem and Scout as adults, facing a world that had not changed for the better no matter how hard their father had tried to make it a better world for them.

Like Atticus, I wanted to make it a better world for my children. But I finally realized this couldn't be done unless it became a better world for all children. But to accomplish this, I can't be the child I long to be. I can't join Jem and Scout and Dill at play. I'll never be able to walk that dusty road again barefoot just doin' nothin'. I've lived too long and I know too much.

Humankind, as nature, remains red in tooth and claw. And as long as it does, I can't live just doin' nothin'. I have even had to give up the toys of adulthood, the things with which I used to play that only filled the time and gave me the illusion that they were somehow of importance. It is easy to intellectualize the proverb: “A wise man lives simply” unless you begin to deal with the fact that such sayings always exclude women and why. And don't try to make the term man generic when it isn't intended.

But it's hard to live it, this thing of putting aside the toys and focusing on the things of real importance. And this is new to me; I am grappling with it, trying to understand it every day now. It's a hard thing and I fervently wish I were not compelled to do it, that like Boo I could just stay in the house and avoid the ugliness outside. However, when the circumstances demanded it Boo did come outside and face the ugliness, the real madness, the real insanity, of a society believing it to be sane.

While I believe in angels, like my daughters Diana and Karen now gone on before me and with whom I believe I will be reunited when I pass away, I believe adults have all the responsibility for children, no part of which may be sloughed off onto angels in any way. As I do not blame God for my failures, so I will not accept the blaming of God or angels for the failures of others.

As Boo watched the children through cracked shutters from the confines of his lonely, dark tomb, their lives began to be a part of his. He became their guardian angel, a mad angel, from time to time placing small treasures for them to discover in that hole in the tree.

Was it possible for a madman to know, as I believe he must have, the children were in danger? One has to suppose that such a madman can know and sense things sane people cannot. As the film Rain Man so well portrayed, savants are the product of some forms of madness.

Boo was a kind of mad savant in respect to the children. The genius in his madness made him their guardian angel, an angel who could plunge a knife into the evil Mr. Ewell that was intent on revenging himself by his cowardly attempt to murder the children; and undoubtedly would have done so had Boo not been there out of sight watching over them.

Apart from the treasures Boo left for the children in that tree and the incident of the blanket during the fire at Aunt Maudie’s house the children never knew they had such a guardian angel until that moment when the evil Ewell attacked them. Nor should children be expected to know of such angels. They had, in fact, been warned of him, warned by dire threats and morbid stories to stay away from him. He was the neighborhood bogeyman of their childhood. How very strange that a bogeyman, a madman, becomes a guardian angel.

Scout was mistaken in her sadness that she and Jem had never given Boo anything in return for his love and gifts, his kindness to them, even saving their lives. The children had given a madman the most precious gift of all: A reason for being; a reason for living. Imagine that: Reason in a madman! And reason because of children! But then this should be the kind of reason exercised by all that consider themselves sane.

What loving parents wouldn't wish for their children such a guardian angel as Boo? An angel who watches over their children when circumstances, circumstances of which the parents are all too often unaware, put them in harm's way?

Just as Atticus could never tell Jem or Scout to be obedient to him if he failed to perform as a man, neither can I of my own children should I fail to do so. Children all too soon learn the difference between those who only preach and those who do as they preach.

I often enter the world of both the novel and the film and lose myself in them. Toward the end, the novel describes little Scout taking Boo home after he has saved her and Jem from the evil Ewell. Boo has asked her to do this. It's as though he is a frightened child himself, frightened to be separated from the children, frightened to once more enter his dark and lonely place apart from them.

But Scout refuses to lead Boo home by the hand. She has him offer her his arm, just like a real lady and gentleman would do, and Scout makes sure that any neighbor that might be watching will see that the madman who has saved her and her brother's lives is a gentleman. And she is a lady, a little eight-year-old lady on the gentleman's arm.

And I recall the passage, “A little child shall lead them.” But the prophet failed to recognize the fact that the Them are madmen like Boo Radley. And how could he? Women and children were not, and never are, the equal of men to such prophets.

But little Scout on the arm of a madman, their roles now reversed; it is a scene that never fails to bring the sting of tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat. The producers of the film, the script writers, had enough sensitivity and artistry to have Scout walking Boo Radley to his house with her hand in his arm, as though he was escorting her, rather than her leading him by the hand like a child. I believe Harper Lee insisted on this. But it was too complicated to explain the purpose of this in the film as Harper Lee in her book. Perhaps the filmmakers depended on the sensitivity of viewers to catch this. But like the chiaroscuro effect of the heart in the courtyard of Gigi, very few do.

You must read Harper Lee’s account in her book to understand the whole significance of little Scout realizing that to tell the truth about Boo would be “sort of like shootin' a mockingbird,” to understand how a little eight-year-old girl could understand the significance of insisting Boo offer his arm to her rather than his hand for her to take him home. Even as I write of this, each time I review this whole scene in my mind's eye I continue to feel the sting of the tears and the lump forming in my throat. And I feel the longing to flee back into a time when the boy, not the man, had such love and wisdom as that of little Scout. And a madman.

However, when I put the book down or the film comes to an end, when I begin to write, the reality of Now is there to greet me. And I face the fact once more that it is, after all, just a story. There are no Boo Radleys, only children who suffer and die daily for the lack of them.

But speaking of a little child leading, what of the lynch mob little Scout disperses by the simple but ever profound ingenuousness of being a child? Don't adults need the leading, the love and wisdom of guardian angels in the form of children? Oh, how very desperately we need them! We need the saving faith of their love and wisdom when our own fails so miserably. How often the world appears to me as a mad lynch mob in need of the love and wisdom of a child to disperse it, “maybe we need a police force of children” as Atticus phrased it to be the leaders of love and wisdom into sanity.

The hope and optimism with which I greet each day is, I believe, of God, and is based on my belief that if good people know better, they will do better. If I could learn, so can others. If I can be led of a child to see and understand from Harper Lee's story and the cruelties perpetrated against children everywhere, so can others.

I learned long ago through many futile attempts on my part that good people needed something to give them hope that they could actually do something substantive to change things for the better. Many good people give themselves to causes in the hope that this will prove to be the case. I needed such hope myself.

However, I also came to realize that there were just too many things in need of change, that good people often feel impotent in the face of so many problems of ever-growing magnitude, of such evil in the ascendancy all about on every hand. But why, as Thoreau pointed out, should there be a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to only one hacking at the root? But so it has always been. This is why the evil has always prevailed. Good people are too busy and fragmented lacking agreement, lacking consensus of what to do!

In fact, I began to realize that good people are too busy to be free! If, as philosophers have always pointed out, to be both ignorant and free is an impossibility and America is becoming an ignorant, illiterate nation, the warning is implicit. And if good people are both ignorant and too busy to be politically active, the end of this should be obvious. The very system that condemned Tom Robinson is a reflection of this. But have good people become good citizens as a result? Sadly, even tragically, the answer is No. But I know that all the people of the world have at least this in common: Parents' love for their children. If the focus of the world could be brought to bear on children, it could be the basis of dialogue between all nations of the world.

Harper Lee addresses many things in her novel which made the story and her way of writing it worthy and deserving of the Pulitzer, many things not brought out in the film and deserving of in-depth analysis such as the interactions of the various people involved with the courtroom proceedings of the trial of Tom Robinson, and the real point of Mrs. Dubose and Mr. Raymond as characters in the book.

Suffice it to say that the awarding of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer was largely based on the social injustices she addressed in such a masterful way, not on the things about Boo and the children. The world easily recognizes, and always has though throughout history been impotent to prevent, such injustices as the crime committed against Tom Robinson. This is a familiar and infamous theme throughout history. But I believe the real story Harper wanted to tell was the one I have emphasized. I believe she was listening to the little girl within herself who was crying to be heard. And Harper responded to that little girl she used to be, who still cried out to be heard, in a most astonishing way!

However, neither the Pulitzer nor the Nobel is awarded to children. Nor are they given for the wisdom of children. If this were simple cynicism I could deal with that; I understand that. But the cynical blindness of humankind is beyond my capacity to heal in myself or any other, beyond the ability of any one individual. I will say that I believe my eyes have been opened somewhat because of what a little girl in a grown woman's book has said to me. And maybe Harper Lee, consciously or not, was trying to reach men with this message. And in my own way, I fervently want to help that little girl to be heard. To do this, the little boy within myself must have a voice. It is that little boy who perfectly loves that little girl and understands what she is trying to say. It is that little boy who understands the relationship between Scout and Boo Radley, the relationship between these two angels; each in a very distinctive way, the guardian angel of the other. But isn't this the way it is supposed to be between all children and adults?

I see Jem and Scout and Dill. They are on their clandestine and fearless mission in the night to try to get a surreptitious peek at Boo Radley. They have not yet discovered that it isn't a madman like Boo they should fear, it is the insanity of the world, the insanity of their own small society in Maycomb that will condemn an innocent man to death just because he is a Negro, a society that will do this and still allow the real monsters such as the Ewells to continue to run wild and prey upon the innocent and defenseless. But Scout becomes afraid as they approach the Radley house and I hear Jem telling her, “I declare to the Lord, you're gettin' more like a girl every day!”

As a man, I can laugh at Jem and still understand his aggravation. It will take time for him to grow out of his aggravation toward Scout and to appreciate girls, for him to appreciate what little girls become as they grow up. But Jem has the advantage of a father who will teach him to respect girls, a father who loves his little girl and will teach Jem to show her due regard as she grows up. Not all children have such an advantage. But they should.

And should Jem grow up and become the father of a little girl? Oh, my! What he will learn about girls he would never learn otherwise. He will learn as a man what it is to cherish. But this is only for those like Jem to learn, for only those like him are capable of learning such a thing.

But if little boys and girls are taught and encouraged to respect each other, they will grow into ladies and gentlemen. Provided they are given the love and affection that is their due as children and don't fall into the hands of real monsters in the guise of human beings.

All children should have the opportunity of mysterious missions in the night without fear, of play involving daring exploits of courage, of finding nothing scary but what they read in books. I have so much yet to learn. But the children are more than willing to teach. I feel the melancholy of not putting the message of the children in the words they would use. But I live with the disadvantage of being all grown up. Like dear Harper Lee, all I can do is try. And pray God and the children will still bless and overcome my shortcomings of age, overcome the many years of cynical disillusionment through the shattering of dreams, so many of which turned into nightmares, and some those with which all parents live.

It has been said “all children deserve better parents.” And to a certain extent, I have to agree; but I believe this goes back to my thought that if good people know better, they will do better. But this presupposes that the message of Harper Lee’s book will finally be successful in preventing the Mayella Violet Ewells ever growing up so love-starved that they will put their hands on a Bible and swear a false oath condemning another human being to death!

What happened to a little girl that produced a woman like Mayella instead of a little girl like Scout and her so very different prospects as a woman? The challenge the message of the children presents is that of awakening the consciences of adults to the all-too-often silent cry of children who cannot be heard, who have no other voice than that of the adults who are supposed to be responsible for the children. But the message can only be effective once it is able to find expression in the voices and language of the children, and finds willing listeners in adults.

Fairy tales add a needed dimension of life in order for children to exercise their imagination. Fortunate is the child raised in an environment of books and reading, and how well I recall those earliest stories from Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm, Hans Brinker, Black Beauty, Snow White and so many more. Even Henry Thoreau mentions Cinderella.

Granted many fairy tales and nursery rhymes had very dark beginnings before they became suitable for children. But as they evolved over time many of these became stories of magic and enchantment often with a beautiful moral important to the instruction of children.

Much of what we hold on to in the realm of fantasy as adults has its earliest beginning from the fairy tales of childhood. We are loath to give up beliefs in fairies and all those things belonging to the domain of childhood. In many cases the beliefs do not change in adulthood, but take on other forms as a compromise with reality.

While stories of magic and witchcraft apart from those contained in the Bible are anathema to many churches, I continue to believe Halloween and Santa should be fun and the domain of children, just as with the stories by J. K. Rowling.

At the time of its introduction a news item read, “The age of Potter VI officially dawned today as millions of fans from sweaty New York to chilly Australia got their hands on ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ and began the darkest of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novels.”

I commend Rowling for bringing a world of imagination and fantasy to children, for the great encouragement she is giving to children causing them to want to read. And while I don’t know, it would not surprise me to learn she owes a debt to the Bible and early Sunday School lessons for Harry Potter. Apart from the history and lessons clearly intended for adult readers, the Bible is replete with the stories of demons and witches, conjurors and sorcerers, of enough magic and fantasy to fire and encourage any child’s imagination.

Having been born into the age of radio long before TV in homes, children of my era had the benefit of all those great radio shows that required and inspired imagination. Reading and radio— a magical combination that gave free rein to our imagination. To read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is to involve yourself in the world of imagination the peculiar domain of children Sam Clemens so well understood, and had the rare genius to communicate. Harper Lee certainly understood the importance of books to Jem and Dill, and emphasized this in To Kill A Mockingbird.

The old radio programs like Let’s Pretend along with Terry and the Pirates and a host of others had most of us children tuned in. But there were also programs like I Love a Mystery, Inner Sanctum, and The Whistler that drew children into a darker world of imagination.

Admittedly, many fairy tales, radio programs, and children’s books of my time included a large amount of violence, of murder and mayhem. But the visual element made so graphic in films and TV were, apart from some illustrations, lacking, which left us largely to our imagination, and it was the stimulation of imagination required that among other things made my generation the last of the real readers and writers in America, primarily because TV being a passive media simply cannot compete with books and those old radio programs when it comes to exercising one’s imagination.

However, it should not surprise anyone that the visual stimulation of so much violence in “children’s programming” on TV and in video “games” causes great harm to children. And while my generation had Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, the so-called “cartoons” of today are a virtual parade of violence far beyond what children used to be exposed to. And unlike the cartoons in the theaters of my time, TV spews a continual stream of violence into the homes across America. And the noise! This is why I seldom tune in the FOX news channel. This is one of the very worst offenders when it comes to mind-numbing, crashing, screaming, piercingly shrill noise the producers seem to believe is needed for viewers. Shouting and screaming at adults, the noise and babble of people talking over each other punctuated with station breaks to the accompaniment of noise that would sterilize frogs and salamanders 300 yards distant! One wonders what kind of audience such programmers are trying to attract? Perhaps they all grew up to the kind of piercingly shrill mind-numbing noise too many call “music.”

But when it comes to the power of graphics, and not just that of violence and pornography, this is a double edged sword. Charles Lamb in his essay Witches, And Other Night-Fears writes of a book in his father’s library History of the Bible in which there were several woodcuts. One of these depicted the conjuring forth of the last judge of Israel, the prophet Samuel, by the Witch of Endor. Of this picture Lamb writes, “I wish that I had never seen.” With the keen perception peculiar to his genius Lamb concludes, “Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.”

However, as Lamb continues to point out in his essay that woodcut haunted him all his life due to the strength of his “child’s credulity,” requiring his need of a night light from childhood on, of his words of admonition to parents not to leave their children alone in the dark “where there be monsters.” The child’s strength of credulity lends itself, as Lamb recognized, to both beauty and monsters. The harm of it in adulthood is to subscribe to harmful fantasies, to be gullible and easily taken in by the “fairy tales” of charlatans and scoundrels, and one can only wonder what Lamb would have to say of the monsters children face today, the graphic and all pervasive violence and perversion children are being made to endure today.

In a world seeming gone mad and intent on nuclear annihilation unless sanity is restored, there is a lot of comfort to be found in the old hymns I knew and sang as a child in my grandparent’s small church in Little Oklahoma. They brought me a lot of comfort in the very uncertain and dangerous world of WWII, one in which children needed all the help and encouragement, all the comfort and escape from grim reality they could find. And children continue to need things to stir their imagination and encourage them to read, those better things offering a source of escape and comfort in a world adults seem intent on making increasingly unfriendly and dangerous to children.

A father kills a pervert for molesting his little two year old daughter and I say “Good for him!” I can only hope this father will get an attorney and a jury like those of “A Time To Kill.” It is an evil system that gives perverts more protection by law than their victims, but when good people serving on juries in such cases are making the decisions there remains a chance for real justice.

Ma Joad understood the realities and exigencies of life; and her only question to Tom when he told his mother of killing a man was “Did he need killin’ son?” The only flaw in Steinbeck’s account here was Ma even asking Tom if the man needed killing. The real Ma’s of those like Tom would know their sons better than to ask such a question. But if like me you were raised among those people Steinbeck immortalized in “The Grapes of Wrath” you would understand they had a very practical and pragmatic view of justice, and had a very good understanding of the fact that some people simply “need killin’. “

The monsters in human guise preying on women and children simply “need killin’.” And if not simply killed, those like Jeffs and others of his species simply need to be put in prison for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately for women and children there are too many of the same species in politics, our judiciary, the media and Hollywood that promote an agenda of perversion and pornography preventing removing the monsters like Jeffs and others of his species permanently from society. In too many cases this leaves only “vigilante justice” as the only kind of appropriate justice. But then I call to mind Caesar Bush calling the new Minutemen patrolling our borders “vigilantes.” Why in either case should there be a need for such “vigilantes?”

It is this same species of those like Jeffs that promotes hatred toward all normal people like Ma Joad and her son Tom that understand some people simply need killing, it is this same species including those of the ACLU and La Raza that promotes hatred toward those of us who believe you cannot make nice to perverts, Muslims, and the enemy nation of Mexico and still have a secure America or a nation that cherishes its young and families, that promotes hatred of all of us who believe America should be a sovereign nation with secure borders and a national identity based on our heritage, culture, and language.

Many of the enemies of America are salivating over “Death of a President.” (AP) “Peter Dale of More4, which is the digital offshoot of Britain’s Channel 4 network, plans to show the program on Oct. 9. The White House declined to comment on the network’s announcement, saying it would not dignify the program with a response.”

No one despises the Triumvirate of Caesar Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld more than I. And if America survives for a history of this reign to be written it will go down as the worst administration America has ever suffered! And ever since 9/11 I have been one of the most vocal in making my hatred of this Triumvirate known.

But from the beginning I have also noted that once this “war on terrorism” was initiated by Caesar Bush and Company there was no hope of winning unless such a war was prosecuted to win! And while whining Democrats have absolutely nothing to offer as an alternative, my continued hatred for Bush and Company is based on their not fighting the war against Islam to win, but sacrificing Americans all the while attempting to appease their Muslim “friends.”

Muslims and Mexicans do not assimilate! They colonize! Neither group has the slightest interest in being real Americans! And both groups constitute a clear and present danger to America! Only when I see Caesar Bush and Company address this clear and present danger to America will I change my attitude toward our own “Axis of Evil” or believe they or any in Congress have the best interests of America in mind.

The right thing, the most responsible and appropriate thing to have been done by Caesar Bush and Company the very evening of 9/11 was, as I suggested at the time in a letter to Bush, cruise missiles right on top of Kabul and Baghdad! And then when anyone complained to respond with “You want some of this too?” Had that been done there would have been no further loss of American lives in wars fought not to win, but rather to protect corporate interests, and there would be no present Iranian or North Korean nuclear threats.

But do those in the media have the best interests of America in mind? Do those in the media display any interest in telling the truth rather than engaging in politically correct diatribes, panaceas, and analgesics? No! Too many are “plastic,” not real Americans. As a result of all the betraying and selling out of America we are being forced to confront the question of what kind of America can possibly emerge once more worthy of the trust and respect of other nations?

We need a leadership that proves it has the best interests of America as its goal, not corporate profits. And failing this kind of leadership America cannot possibly survive no matter how many “proxy wars” are fought in the meantime. There is no appeasing the tyrants and bullies of either religion or politics; like child molesters they simply “need killin’.” But America has no such leadership capable of either telling it like it is, of telling the truth or prosecuting a war to win against our enemies.

Brenda Starr is a name that evokes much nostalgia for me. Dale Messick, the creator of the comic strip died not long ago at age 98. She told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview “Most comics, the main characters are heroes, guys, and they don’t write for women. I was a woman so I was writing for women and I think that’s what put her over.”

But despite my being a boy devoted to heroes like Superman and playing cowboy with cap pistols and BB gun pretending to be the Lone Ranger or Red Ryder like any normal boy and I considered girls alien creatures, fascinating but suspect at best, when the strip began to appear in 1940 I was an avid fan from the very first. During WW II Brenda as with many cartoon and comic strip characters of the time was fully involved in the effort against the Axis Powers, and she proved to be as adventurous, brave and courageous as any man.

While Wonder Woman was also doing her part in like manner with her marvelous invisible airplane and magic powers making me a fan from her first appearance as well, I was entranced by Brenda’s ongoing relationship with the mysterious Basil St. John with his eye patch like that of a pirate, and his mysterious illness treated with a serum made from black orchids growing in the Amazon jungle. And Brenda Starr with her Rita Hayworth gloriously abundant, radiantly red hair and sparkling emerald green eyes was breathtakingly beautiful, something not lost on me even as a young boy.

Perhaps my earliest readings as a child of Scott, Cooper, Stratton-Porter and others together with WWII and the films of the time made for the romantic in me. Whatever the reason, I was drawn to this ongoing relationship between Brenda and her mysterious lover with the black eye patch and his black orchids. It would thrill me every time Brenda would discover a black orchid left her by the mysterious St. John, and I would keep hoping for a happy outcome between Brenda and him.

It is the nostalgic longing for the mystery of love and romance Brenda Starr and Basil St. John represented I miss most of all, the nostalgia for what those black orchids represented to me as a boy that has been lost to this generation I find so tragic. Of the sources of wonder to the writer of Proverbs in the Old Testament was “… the way of a man with a maid.”

I believe the wonder of the mystery of love and romance between Brenda Starr and Basil St. John has been betrayed by an age that leaves nothing to the imagination of such things, and in this betrayal so has this generation of young people been betrayed, and lost to the young people of today the wonder of “… the way of a man with a maid.”

But as I continue to point out romance requires a national Ethos given to the best impulses, speech and behavior of which we are capable, one exemplified by the great musicals when poets worked in America.

However, if one were to look for the best remaining virtue and character of America today in my opinion it would be found in the rural churches across our nation. A glance at the church listings here in the Kern River Valley tells anyone we are a community of believers, and one of a diversity of Christian beliefs. However, our churches are for the most part comprised of small congregations typical of most rural communities. Even before the lake went in here in the valley, we had a number of churches sometimes serving only about a dozen people in attendance on any given Sunday. And though larger churches have sprung up, for the better part these still reflect a community, something often lost in metropolitan churches.

But here in the past there would be the occasional “traveling evangelist” or other itinerant preacher that would show up. These were a real treat for us in those days because the meetings often had the aura of the old “Brush Arbor” meetings with which so many Southerners like my grandfather were acquainted.

For those of us who have had the pleasure of traveling throughout the rural communities of the Real South in places like Georgia and Alabama, we understand the character of community churches throughout America so well represented by my own maternal grandparent’s small church in Little Oklahoma in Southeast Bakersfield on the corner of Cottonwood and Padre. Grandad built the small church himself and served as its pastor, while my grandmother played the piano for the singing that was such a prominent part of both worship and fellowship.

They won’t find it in great cathedrals, but if those in Congress, the universities and schools, the media, and Hollywood sincerely wanted to know the Real America, they would spend time in the small rural churches throughout our nation. Despite the crude and failed stereotyping of those like Sinclair Lewis and Hollywood, in no other institutions of America is the genuine and best character of our nation so well expressed as it is in the small community churches scattered throughout our nation. Nowhere else will you find the real morality, the hopes and dreams of real Americans, such genuine faith, such genuine belief in actual virtue and in our nation than among the small churches like those right here in the Kern River Valley.

To have been born into and raised among the true believers of the Bible in the small rural churches of America, to sing the hymns “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again” and “In the Garden” with such real devotion and faith among other believers, though small in number characteristic of these rural churches, is to experience something that cannot be made known or understood by the greatest genius of literary or film artistry.

Notwithstanding the human weaknesses and failures we all share in common, the hypocrisy and ignorance, the prejudices, all of which are to be found throughout the institutions of America low and high, it is in the rural churches of America you find the people so transparently honest in these weaknesses and failures together with the best of what we are as human beings in genuine sacrificial love and caring for others, of caring about America.

No matter the manifold and legitimate criticism, such believers also believe in an America “One nation under God,” have not forgotten our Founding Fathers and all that America used to represent and used to be taught in both schools and churches, all that America should still represent in virtue, in hopes and dreams of a future for our nation. And while in the wisdom of the Founding Fathers no state church was to be established, one cannot legitimately separate the Bible and Christianity from the intent of our Founding Fathers nor the reflection of this when it comes to the genuine character of the Real America so well represented in the rural churches of America.

Religious kooks continue to abound, many of them “wearing soft clothing and living in king’s palaces,” those like this latest one arrested in Las Vegas whose only obvious interest in religion is sex and money. But in this he differs nothing from many “respectable” people like politicians and a host of others. No truly good person wants power and authority over others, no truly good person is greedy and avaricious whether cloaked in religion or politics.

It is patently obvious the President of Iran is an example of Hitler, and there is no appeasing a bully or despotic tyrant whether of religion or politics. But what is it that motivates those in America lusting for power and authority over others if not evil. The lesser of evils remains evil. But the civilized nations of the world must win this war against the barbaric threat of Islam. The question is whether we have a “lesser evil” in the leadership of America willing and capable of prosecuting such a war to win? Not if our porous borders for the sake of slave labor to benefit the wealthy is the standard of “concern” for America on the part of Bush and others.

Both Clinton and Bush took the oath of office with hand on Bible. Both have ostentatiously displayed their Bibles while entering churches. But if the book is no more than a talisman or lucky rabbit’s foot to them, if they refuse to live according to the precepts of Jesus they clearly proclaim their hypocrisy. And it is this hypocrisy on the part of our leaders that has not only cost America its standing before all the nations of the world, but is inviting the very disasters to which these leaders pay only lip service all the while refusing to do what is best and right for America like securing our borders and doing away with ruinous trade agreements designed to bankrupt our nation to benefit only the few in power, the lesser of evils compared to those like the President of Iran and all other Islamofascists but evil nevertheless.