The nation’s second largest school district shut down today as a result of “credible” threats received via email, which I’m sure will further heighten all that the anti-Muslim rhetoric. And after getting through an advance reader’s copy of Ben Rawlence’s City of Thorns, I’m feeling sad that maybe this country will regress into World War II paranoia where, if one remembers, a particular class of citizens was marched off to internment camps to wait out the war while proving their allegiance by dying in a country they knew little about.

Hate begets hate. When we let the future leaders stoke the fires of hatred in our hearts, we are no better than those in the Middle East who stoke the fires of religious fanaticism, or those in other countries who commit violence in the name of a noble cause.

Gavin Aung Than of Zen Pencils has done a touching and thought provoking interpretation on a speech Robert F. Kennedy gave called “On the mindless menace of violence” immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King. I think it is a fitting reminder for us to remember the ideals that this country was built on, and to remind us of our moral responsibility to discourage the rhetoric of hate.