I’ve had mixed feelings about Tom Trento — I follow him on Facebook but have not friended him — ever since he drove up to Arab festival in Dearborn as an observer-provocateur. In response, I made friends with Dearborn mover and shaker Ron Amen; however, sigh, these far left and right alignments do not work well for me. If through “ethos, logos, and pathos” defeating one’s most strident (but reasoning) critic makes for progress, Trento is a strong critic of Islam where criticism is needed and, perhaps, reform or strong directional emphasis involving literature extant may respond to it.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

We cheerlead our own. We enjoy our fans. It’s good to have a good cultural and ethnic program and to feel good about it.

“If I am not for others, what am I?”

Helping others — other cultures and ethnic enclaves — grow into their own good program may come with the territory.

In the west, “Judeo-Christian” (+ “Greco-Roman”) alignment may be where history has delivered us.

What about everyone else?

Hillel’s Question No. 2 applies.

In the first stages of Facebook uptake — desktop computing meets broadband meets the “social network” — Qanta Ahmed asked, more or less, “What now? What do we do with this?” My response: “Good influence.”

As Jews, perhaps we talk about ourselves too much; however, we don’t conquer or proselytize but through thought. Good influence.

I’m going to add here a friend from Papua New Guinea, a nation that when the Christian ethnologists and linguists arrived supported more than 850 separate language cultures, some living within miles of one another and unaware of the existence of the neighbor.

I am personally going to turn into a “people who garden” if I can ever get into a house . . . . 🙂

I am for, at least in principle, the Baloch, the Kurds, Shiite Islam, Sufi Islam, truth-telling people wherever they are, however governed and organized, and I hope we will together say goodbye to a few more political criminals and organizations (like al-Qaeda and ISIS, like Setad in Iran, like “MoscVegas” in Russia) in my lifetime.

“With every generation, a little more freedom is won.”

I hope here that’s what we’re working on.

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