After shuddering through the news over the last few days, I’ve decided that a few things need to be said that shouldn’t have to be said, ever. They should be known and felt on a cellular level by all who call this country home. But we seem to be at a moment in history when certain truths, even the ones we hold to be self-evident, need to be expressed in plain and robust language.

So pardon me for stating the obvious, but the obvious is now tragically under fire, and everyone who has a voice and fears for the sanity and integrity of this nation has to state it. Loudly. Over and over. Until we’re heard.

And so:

1. Hate is damaging to our country, and to our souls.

2. Bigotry in all its forms is evil.

3. Combating bigotry in all its forms requires acting against it, speaking out against it, and confirming the humanity and dignity of all people with firmness and unflagging courage.

4. Bigotry is an affront to the dream of America. It’s an affront to our notions of patriotism, what it means to love this country, what love and country mean. It’s an affront to the faith professed by so many bearers of hate and racism, including the very faith built upon the life and death of an impoverished Jewish refugee of color.

5. That impoverished Jewish refugee would have marched against the bigots. He would have healed the injured. He would have preached non-violence. He would have wept.

6. Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white supremacists other torch-wielding bigots are not Christians, no matter what they say. They are not patriots. They are barely even Americans, not in the truest sense, not as a people who share a belief in this beautiful, hospitable, hopeful land of ours and so we share the land itself. We share the dream itself, an ideal that calls out for equality in the ugly face of racism.

7. Those in government and the public eye who fail to condemn the bigots, who silently tolerate or abhorrently minimize them, are their enablers. Those who go further — who equate the heil-saluting, hate-filled bigots with the anger of those protesting them — are worse than enablers. They are bigots, too.

8. And anyone who speaks this way from the highest rostrum of the land, from the all-hallowed apex of power and the focal point of global attention, isn’t a patriot. He isn’t a Christian, no matter what he says. He’s barely even American, not in that one true sense.

And he shouldn’t be our president, period.