DICK YARBROUGH: Some random thoughts on some random subjects

Happy Birthday, America! I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, even though I wasn’t born on the Fourth of July. As for Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” I would remind us all that America was great before he showed up and is great today. That is because of the great people who inhabit this land. Working folks. Love their families. Care for their neighbors. Protect us. Teach us. Pray for us. We tend to forget them because of all the noise about all that is wrong with us. But there are a lot more good people than there are noisemakers and naysayers. ...

Speaking of naysayers, I wrote a column recently about putting the responsibility for teaching children about social issues in the home where it belongs and not holding our teachers responsible. That got a response from a retired sociology professor who wondered if he had misunderstood me. (If so, he’s the first one.) He thought schools should be taking kids on a historical guilt trip. One example was the internment of Japanese during World War II, 80 years ago. That happened, by the way, after Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor when we weren’t sure who was friend and who was foe. I told him I was OK with his idea if we also covered the Bataan Death March in which some 500-600 Americans died brutally at the hands of the Japanese army and how we got Japan back on its feet and prospering after we had defeated them. But that would defeat the purpose of a guilt trip, wouldn’t it?. ...