CRUELTY. CALL IT BY ITS REAL NAME.

Border Patrol Tear Gasses Children on Sunday, November 25, 2018.  (Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters)

It is one thing to forgive cruelty.  That does not mean cruelty should be accepted.  Cruelty should never be accepted.

          For too long and in too many ways, cruelty has been accepted.  It continues to be accepted, and practiced, by people who make excuses for it.   Cruelty should never be accepted, rather, it should be resisted.  The people who practice cruelty should even be forgiven.  But cruelty itself should never have been accepted in the past, and it is not entitled to acceptance now.

          Some people claim that cruelty is political.  There is nothing political about cruelty.  Cruelty is cruelty.  Calling cruelty political demeans political and excuses cruelty.

          In its plain, unvarnished form cruelty is evil.  Cruel people may or may not be evil people, but that is not the point.  Cruelty itself, the act of being cruel to another human being, that is evil.  And cruelty is never acceptable.

          Call it by its real name.  If it's cruelty, it doesn't have any other name.

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