First of all, before I start  my column, I want to thank all of the marvelous people from the 20 community voices who wrote essays on Democracy and Civil Rights or other civil rights issues or even personal reflections on what Dr. King means to them. I learned so much from reading their essays and I hope their writings serve as a primer for a reflective King Holiday weekend for our readership. I hope Dr. King would be proud. I know I am.

My son teases me that I am obsessed with Donald Trump. As a political scientist, I am wary of the things that Trump talks about and what he would like to do. He is a leader without conscience and a complete disregard for the people around him, people he would discard if it suited his purposes.

My dad was wounded during World War II when a kamikaze plowed into the aircraft hanger he had just left on the USS Sangmon during the Battle of Okinawa. His first cousin Anch was killed on the beaches of Italy during the war. They paid a high price for the defense of Democracy against ruthless dictators like Adolph Hitler. Donald Trump would have considered them fools for volunteering and then getting wounded or killed during the war. They made the sacrifice to defend Democracy that Donald Trump would like to destroy for his own narcissistic purposes.