Bigotry’s Evil Poison: The Enemy Within : Arrests shock Southern California into new awareness

Thanks to dogged law enforcement work, Southern California in recent days has had chilling glimpses of the aims and inner workings of some of society’s lunatic-fringe elements. The arrests of suburban white supremacists who allegedly were plotting a race war--with planned attacks on African-Americans, Jews and houses of worship--exposed a shocking portrait of hate group operations. If that glimpse is accurate, it is a snapshot of the very worst within our society.

It is doubly sobering at the outset to recognize that any group of nuts potentially can undo the fragile balances of democracy. All the more important that we identify common values in our diverse cultural and religious traditions, and use them in building strength as best we can.

Ultimately, a democracy must employ more than its guns, its undercover agents and its arrest warrants if it is to fortify itself against those who would undermine it. Today, this must be an active process. And because we have come to the edge of the country’s frontier, it is an imperative, not a luxury; the day when dissenters and misfits could pick up and move on is gone, no longer the option it might have been in an earlier America.

So if the nation is to sustain its democratic vision, it must advance the best of those qualities that support our various traditions. At the same time, our shared secular faith--our espousal of political liberty--summons us to endure even those ideas, though not illegal conduct, that reasonable people surely will find repugnant.

If making it all work sounds difficult, it is. Nobody ever said that modern democracy would be easy to conduct. All the more reason to press for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. Fortunately, we have had some heartening examples along those lines in recent days.

At a huge turnout Sunday at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, allegedly a prime target of the skinheads, the Rev. Cecil L. Murray urged churchgoers to stand for what they believed and be vigorous in fighting hate. And Mayor Richard Riordan urged the city to turn away from division. One woman journeyed there from Orange County to make her presence a personal statement against bigotry.

The spirit of engaging positive values was evident too at a recent breakfast meeting for the new mayor. The president of the Interreligious Council, the Rev. Vivian Ben Lima, urged, in a statement also carried in The Times’ Voices section Monday, that Southern Californians recognize that “each of our traditions has many special gifts to offer the community at large.”

One lesson of the past week, however, is that evil has the capacity at times to be more powerful than good. Consider the day-in and day-out labors of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, to name just one organization, which has been fostering understanding between racial groups in a county that for some symbolizes white suburbia. Yet even with such anticipatory efforts, the hatemongers are out there to reinforce stereotypes. One of those arrested was allegedly peddling machine guns to white supremacists out of a quiet Costa Mesa neighborhood.

To fight those who would undermine democracy, bridge-building among peoples is a must. Southern California has no choice but to work to contain the poison and to build a healthy, tolerant, common community.