Besides the fact that on Meet the Press on Sunday, Colin Powell gave a strong endorsement of Barack Obama for president and a devastating rebuke to the Republican Party and conservatism, he put forward his idea of America. The biggest shame of this campaign has been not been the wispering campaign that Obama is muslim (hes not) but the implication in that accusation that being a muslim makes a person un-American, or, worse, a terrorist. This is taken as a given on the racist right. They are about 10-15% of the population. They are dangerous. They gave us Timothy McVeigh, and the minutemen down on the border. They gave us the most ardent gun enthusiasts. They gave us Lee Harvey Oswald too.

Powell told the story of a mother visting a grave in Arlington National Cemetery. It was one of the countelss white tombstones that cover the rolling hills of Northern Virginia, and are all identical, except for the name, and the symbol on top indicating the faith, if any, of the deceased below. In this case, the stone had a star and cresent on the top, rather than a cross or Star of David, signifying that the dead soldier was muslim.

One of the greatest moral outrages ever was the treatment of black soldiers returning from World War II. They returned to Jim Crow, second-class citizenship in the south, and not much better in the rest of the country. The point is, in America, no citizen should be above the next. Finally someone had the guts and decency to say it!