<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Dear Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">What a crying/screaming shame that the celebration of Ali's magnificent life in Louisville was followed by the senseless tragedy in Orlando. Well, the right-wingers still have their God, Guns, and Guts.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">I just want to observe, as many reporters have, that the FBI was following several of the 9/11 hijackers and suspects in other cases before their heinous acts, and the agents and the agency dropped the ball. How did this guy pass a background check after he had been interviewed by the FBI, not once but twice? The FBI, under Bush and under Obama, has failed us miserably.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">This New York Times article reminds us that the chances of being a victim of a gun homicide in Japan is the same as being hit by lightning. For the odds in other civilized countries see <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html?_r=0" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html?_r=0</a></font></div><div class="" style="margin:2px 0px 0px"><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif"><img class="" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif"></font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif">I grieve for our nation and the mental patterns that cause so much destruction here and abroad,</font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif">This column was published in the Daily News, the Idaho State Journal (1700 words), and will soon appear in the Sandpoint Reader and the Los Cabos Daily News.</font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div id=":26i" class="" tabindex="0"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><b><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Muhammad
Ali and the Power of Pride</font></span></b></p>
<h1 style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><i style="font-family:georgia,serif;line-height:115%;font-size:small;font-weight:normal"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Muhammad Ali taught us all that,
whatever color you are, </span></i><i style="font-family:georgia,serif;line-height:115%;font-size:small;font-weight:normal"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">whatever religion you are, you can be proud of who you are.</span></i></h1><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:15.45pt;text-align:center;line-height:115%;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">—Bill Clinton<span class=""></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:115%"><font face="georgia, serif"><b><span style="color:black"> </span></b><span style="color:black">Most of the nation’s</span><span style="color:black"> founders were
intellectuals who drew moral and political lessons from ancient philosophy.
With regard to pride, they would have been aware that Aristotle ranked it as a
virtue second only to wisdom. They would also have known that in the Christian
tradition pride was one of the seven deadly sins. </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">In
Sunday School we are taught that boasting is a sin, but the previous Friday or
Saturday we were out rooting for our athletic teams with unabashed pride. It is also still common to see the 9/11
bumper sticker “The Power of Pride.”</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">The
Greek philosopher Aristotle said that pride is knowing what we have
accomplished and freely acknowledging that we have done it. Aristotle did not respect people who hid
their lights under a bushel. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">NPR’s
inspiring series <i>This I Believe</i> ended with an essay by Muhammad Ali, and
he sounded just like the brash young boxer we knew in the 1960s. Ali said that he was still the greatest and
that everyone could succeed just as he did.
Ali was unwittingly following Aristotle when he once proclaimed “It
ain’t bragging if you can do it.”</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Normally
we would not tolerate people who say that they are the greatest even though
they may have accomplished much. Do we give Ali a pass because he was a unique
personality, or because he was one of the greatest boxers of all time, or
because of his great humanitarian accomplishments while crippled with
Parkinson’s disease? </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">As a
young black man, facing brutal discrimination at every turn, Ali felt that he
had no choice but to lash out and refuse to be yet another “white man’s Negro.”
Black athletes were expected to be kind, civil, and grateful, but not Ali. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black">Here is
one of his most provocative statements: “</span><span style="color:black">I am America. I am
the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky, my
name not yours. My religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.” Not
only did we get used to him, but we have made him, rightfully so, into a
national hero.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Newspapers<i> </i>persisted in referring to him by his
“slave name” Cassius Clay, and <i><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Time</span></i><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">
magazine called him “Gaseous Cassius.” Even </span>Howard University, America’s
finest black school, blocked him from speaking in a campus hall. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">With
regard to the Vietnam War, he was defiant: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them
Viet Cong. Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from
home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called
Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights?</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">He had
of course more to say: “They never called me nigger, they never lynched me,
they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape or
kill my mother and father.”<br clear="all">
</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Ali
converted to Islam and took a new name that means “beloved of Allah.” His
spiritual journey took him from the radical black nationalism of Malcom X (he
said that he never believed that white men were devils), then to orthodox Sunni
Islam, and finally to the peace-loving Sufis.
His favorite author was the Indian Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan, who founded the Sufi Order of the West
and who believed in the unity of all religions.<strong><span style="font-weight:normal"></span></strong></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><strong><span style="color:black;font-weight:normal"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black">The
Muslim world honored Ali, and the king of Muslim Jordan and president of Muslim
attended his funeral. The United Nations made him “A Messenger of Peace,” and in
1985 he was successful bringing back four Americans held in Beirut, Lebanon. In
1990, six weeks before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Ali traveled to Baghdad
and secured the release of 15 American hostages.</span><span style="color:black">
</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:15.45pt;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black">In his autobiography Ali writes: “I guess I’d settle for
being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of
his people,” and</span><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> with a twinkle in his eye and a glimmer of true humility,</span><span style="color:black"> adds: “And
I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:15.45pt;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black">The Greek word</span><span class=""><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> <i>megalopsychia</i>,
which we translate as “pride,” literally means “having a great soul.” Muhammad
Ali was definitely a great soul, but not the greatest. May this fierce yet
gentle soul rest in peace and may he continue to be an inspiration to us all.</span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:15.45pt;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Nick Gier of Moscow taught philosophy and religion at the
University of Idaho for 31 years. <a name="_GoBack"></a>Read all of his columns
on civil rights at <a href="http://webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/civilrights.htm">http://webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/civilrights.htm</a>.</font></span></p></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br clear="all"></font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><font face="georgia, serif">-- <br></font><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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