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Stan Lee Left a Legacy of Love, Justice and Understanding That is Still Inspiring People Today

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Stan Lee died a year and a half ago, but he is far from forgotten. In a world where civil unrest because of police brutality and general injustice have resulted in massive demonstrations, one of the last things you might expect to wake up to is Stan Lee trending on Twitter. It’s not like he weighed on what’s going on, he’s been dead and I assume he’s busy giving God ideas for his next project after humanity climate change denials itself out of existence.

It turns out Stan did have some wise words about the current moment, he just had them in 1968, and after someone asked what celebrities people still haven’t accepted are gone, people started posting this Stan’s Soapbox which ran in Marvel comic books over 50 years ago.

Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them—to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater—one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately. If his hang-up is black men, he hates ALL black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates ALL redheads. If some foreigner beat him to a job, he’s down on ALL foreigners. He hates people he’s never seen—people he’s never known—with equal intensity—with equal venom.

Now, we’re not trying to say it’s unreasonable for one human being to bug another. But, although anyone has the right to dislike another individual, it’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill out hearts with tolerance. For then, and only then, will we be truly worthy of the concept that man was created in the image of God–a God who calls us ALL—His children.

There was also a video of Lee telling Larry King that if he could change one thing in the real world, he’d get rid of hatred.

Stan Lee wrote about people who became heroes not because they wanted to but because they felt obligated to. Peter Parker’s spider-powers were fun, but his responsibility to be Spider-Man felt overwhelming and crushing to him. He would love nothing more than to stop being Spider-Man and just be a normal college student but he can’t live with himself knowing he has the power to improve the world but chose not to. We all have that great power to change the world in our own way, and with it must come the great responsibility to change it for the better. That’s the lesson Stan Lee taught us that the people whose lives he touched remembered today.

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