Your humble correspondent fancies himself  a decent golfer with a higher than average passion for the game. While I live on a modest income, I am a bit of a golf snob. I have Perrier tastes on a well-water budget, but whenever I get a chance, I drop a dime or 700 on a nice round somewhere.

As I was growing up in a modest income household, I was ingrained with the idea, by family and friends, that rich people got rich by taking advantage of the poor. Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island may have been fictional, but as a young and highly ignorant boy, for all I knew, that was basically how rich people were because that’s what the populace painted them out to be. Growing up in the 70’s; gays, blacks, and women were painted out to be a certain way too unfortunately. There’s a lesson here, but more on that later.

As I started getting into golf, I had a boss invite me to Heritage Golf Club in Hilliard Ohio. I was a little nervous, but I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to play at my first private club. So off I went, in my nicest golf apparel, having spent hours at the driving range getting my swing in peak form so as not to get scoffed at by what was surely going to be a group of scratch golfers.

As I walk in, the staff treat me like royalty. It’s not that they knew me, I was a guest not a member, but that didn’t matter. A private golf club is like any business. They don’t get paid to exist, they get paid by keeping membership up. They do that by treating guests as if they’re all Tiger Woods in hopes that those guests will return, or better yet, join. Yay for capitalism!

But here’s the other thing. The members we played with were incredibly nice also. Most members were what I’d call “doing well” but not rich, and it turns out their golf skills were about average like anywhere else. This was a sub $10,000 a year club, not one for the richest of the rich, but it still got me thinking—every member here makes more money than I do, yet no one looked down on me. I was nervous for no reason!

So as I continued to get better and meet people in the local golf community, I happened to befriend someone who was a member at New Albany Country Club. It is a Jack Nicklaus designed club, with grass tennis courts, a croquet court, an immense clubhouse, an incredible 27 holes laid out among million dollar homes, and a membership that requires you liquidate yourself of approximately six figures to join.

He invited me to play, and off I went. So here comes your humble correspondent, rolling up like Fred Sanford through Beverly Hills, in a 20-year-old rust colored Acura Legend. Not painted the color rust mind you, but a 20-years-of-driving-in-Ohio-winters shade of rust. As I pull into the parking lot, the high-school kids of members are driving two-year old BMW 3-series, and the adults were driving Porsche’s, 6-series BMWs and other highly exclusive cars. I was clearly out of my element.

As I pull up, the boy working the bag drop walks up, offers to take my clubs, sets me up with a cart, and off I go for my round. Again, everyone from the staff to the other members were as polite as can be with no hint of snobbery to be found. They could see I had a passion for the game, a decent swing, and a respect for the course. They didn’t care about my social status, they cared about my character. Imagine that.

My point to all of this being; we all know that bigotry against a race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion is wrong. These days, you’re quite likely to get looked down upon for any such behavior. Yet somehow, those on the left get away with lies and bigotry every day about the affluent among us. Bigoted hate is wrong, no matter who it is directed at, yet somehow class warfare is the one form of hate that is still widely accepted and that has to change.

My favorite quote that I repeat often is from Martin Luther King stating that you should judge someone by the content of their character. It turns out that while he may have added, not the color of their skin, I believe he understood bigotry in any form is wrong.

Are there bad people in the rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, female, male, etc. communities? Of course there are. Should we assume that one of them is a certain way because they’re in that community? Only if you’re a bigot.

Many people try to speculate why America is such a great nation. But like most things in life the answer to that question is quite complicated:

• We have an amazing constitution which gives the government power from the people, not the other way around.
• We have an amazing military that assures that anyone who comes after us will have a rocket shoved up their rectum and sent to the moon.
• We have an amazing geographical location with a wealth of different climates to support many different industries, power generation, and farming.
• Despite leftist agendas, we still have unalienable rights.
• But the one thing that I think makes America truly amazing, is our diversity.

From state to state, city to city, region to region, you will find natural citizens, non-natural citizens, and guest workers from many walks of life. Most have a great story to tell, and with the exception of those of us already born here, most are here in order to make a better life for themselves. People motivated to be great, make us a great nation!

So do me a favor: If you’re someone who has hate in your heart for someone you haven’t even met yet, try a social experiment. Say hello and strike up a conversation with someone you would otherwise avoid. Thurston Howell might turn out to be just a cool dude with a great idea that made him rich. Unless someone is part of a hate group like the Black Panthers, et al., you’ll likely find what I did at the private golf clubs: good people exist in all walks of life and everyone should be judged solely by the content of their character—period.