Evan Almighty. Great movie. Great message. Go see it!

I wrote and published a book on self-esteem in 1997. It has a unique title: “Your Sperm Won — Experiencing Your Value As A Championship Human Being”.

After “Your Sperm Won” was published I mailed a copy to Oprah Winfrey. I also went to visit Oprah’s father, Vernon Winfrey, and gave him a copy which he said he would send to Oprah. I appreciated his help very much.

So would you like to know what “Your Sperm Won” is about. Let me quote a commencement address that Oprah gave for Salem College in 2000. (I found it on the web.) Oprah gives a perfect description of my book:

“The wonder and the beauty of it stops me cold. When you think about how each of us came into being, I think of my father Vernon and my mother Bonita, who were only together one time because she wore a poodle skirt that day. A sperm meets an egg and a life comes into being, but it is so much bigger than that. I am not here because Vernon and Bonita decided to stop on the way home from school one day. Nor are you. Your life is no accident; you were literally loved into being. You exist because God loves you.” –Oprah Winfrey

Did Oprah read my book? I think she did! And it sounds like it had an impact on her. Hey, Oprah, would you mind if I used your quote on the cover of the next edition of “Your Sperm Won”?

Politicians used to politely ask for our vote? Now they try to bully us away from voting for the other candidate by using smear tactics. Instead of saying, “When I am elected I will do this,” they say, “If my opponent is elected she/he will put it to you because he/she is bad, dumb, crooked, incompetent, and/or ugly.”

After listening to political ads, I don’t know who/what is worse: our current politicians or the side effects from pharmaceuticals advertised on TV. They both list so many harmful characteristics, I just want to avoid them.

In the last U.S. Senate race in Tennessee, the candidates spent so much money blasting each other that Bob Corker successfully convinced me not to vote for Harold Ford and Harold Ford successfully convinced me not to vote for Bob Corker. So I didn’t vote for either of them yet Tennessee and the U.S. Senate still got stuck with one of them.

Why can’t we have political candidates who give us good reasons to vote for them instead of smearing the other candidates? Is that too much for Americans to ask?

P.S. If a politician doesn’t have the character and courage to avoid smearing her/his opponent during a campaign, how can we (the public) trust her/him not to smear us when she/he is securely in office?

Many, many people are killed in war, while a few people get rich from war. So, who should get wealthy from war?

In our current system weapons and military equipment manufacturers and suppliers get rich from war. It is huge business. We call it “the defense industry”. But are they the ones who should get the financial spoils of war?

Perhaps it would be more fair if war wealth went instead to the families of those killed in war. Or to those who have been crippled by war. Or to world famine relief. Or to the fight against cancer or AIDS.

Congress could pass a law changing “the defense industry” into “the defense non-profit sector”. They could limit the personal income of weapons and military equipment manufacturers and suppliers to the same dollar amount a combat soldier receives. Then all that war wealth could be used for noble causes to benefit mankind instead of just making a few individuals very wealthy.

What do you think? Who should receive war wealth?

Can nonviolence win against terrorism? Yes. At least twice in history nonviolence overcame terrorists and terrorism.

First, the early Christians overcame the terrorism of Rome through the use of nonviolence. They showed supernatural love to their enemies and eventually won against all the hatred and power of the Roman Empire to be accepted as the official religion.

Second, nonviolent activists overcame the terrorists and terrorism of the American South. Decades of public verbal abuse, beatings, hatred, rape, torture, home burnings, bombings, lynching, and cross burnings were brought to an end through the heroic and courageous application of nonviolent direct action.

Yes! Nonviolence has a track record of working – even against terrorism!