Monday, January 30, 2012

Winston-Salem Journal LTE MO 01/30/12


Freedom of religion
This is in response to the Jan. 23 letter "Pressing their message": If I remember my American history correctly, this country was founded based on freedom of religion. Our forefathers wanted to be free to worship God without the government telling them how, where or when.
I am a professing Christian and absolutely proud to proclaim it. We in America are free to talk about our faith, more freely than in any other country, without fear of persecution. That is one of the many blessings we have, one that we should be thrilled to tell everyone about with each chance we have. Not only does being a Christian give us daily blessings too numerous to count, but it comes with a responsibility to share our faith in Jesus Christ with the entire world. So we should be ready and willing to shout it either on the World Wide Web, the newspaper, billboards or street corners.
The Bible teaches love and compassion for all our fellow men, not casting doubt or making anyone look or seem like a "second-class citizen." Jesus always walked and taught among the everyday people, to sick, the crippled, the criminals, showing them only love and forgiveness, teaching us that we are to do the same.
Yes, this country has been called a Christian nation, but are we really living up to the responsibility of what that really means? Living by God's Word and his example to us through Jesus Christ.

KATHY R. VANHOY
Winston-Salem
Feelings of anger
It seems to me that most people who achieve a sane and stable adulthood come to the realization that making decisions or engaging in actions based on feelings of anger will nearly always lead to negative and regrettable results. Often, the hotter the anger, the greater the remorse.
How is it then that many leading adherents of one of America's two principal political parties claim to be able to act positively in our country's best interest by provoking, encouraging, harnessing and ennobling a deep sense of anger against individuals who agree with the values and beliefs of the country's other party? Are they truly convinced that this manner of expressing their political argument will have real traction with the American people? Or do they hold such deep contempt for those whose views differ from their own that they truly believe a majority will support their immaturity, negativity and self-destructive message when Election Day comes?
Anger must be tempered by our leaders as well as ourselves or we will all regret what will surely follow.

PETER CONNOR
Clemmons
Knee-jerk reaction
Everyone is entitled to their opinion — but that doesn't mean that all opinions are equally valid or even of good quality. A prime example is the current stance some have against Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions (about 3 percent of its overall services). Considering that it provides birth control and education to women and that many women would seek illegal abortions if it were outlawed, there are actually fewer abortions with Planned Parenthood than there would be without it.
But anti-abortion proponents can't think that far. In their minds, Planned Parenthood equals abortion equals bad, and that's all they need to know — all they want to know.
I think there's no better way to run a democracy than the way we do: one person, one vote. I certainly don't think that voters should be disqualified by intellect — that would open our system to abuse. But I wish there were some way to ensure that all voters were educated and informed, with an understanding of both sides — or all sides — of every pertinent issue. Too many Americans make decisions about issues by knee-jerk reaction, and that's bad for America.

PAUL KIRBY
Winston-Salem
One detail
Regarding the debate about guns in city and county parks: Gun advocates will tell you that guns don't kill people. People kill people kill people. They leave out one detail: People with guns kill more people than people without guns.
If people are allowed to bring guns to parks, I will stop patronizing those parks.

RICHARD SIMMONS
Winston-Salem
Strongly committed
The misnamed National Organization for Marriage offered its congratulations to Newt Gingrich for his victory in South Carolina.
The group's president, Brian Brown, said, "It is now clear that the Republican Party will nominate a candidate who is strongly committed to preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
Honestly, Jon Stewart couldn't make up something this funny.

SARAH G. FINCH
Winston-Salem

9 comments:

  1. LTE #1: If I remember MY history correctly, our country was founded on the notion that there were shorter routes to find spices. The freedom FROM religion thing came later, when the mother country was trying to force one particular religion as the only religion to practice. Kinda like what our religious zealots here are doing now.

    LTE #2: The emotions that are provoked, encouraged, harnessed and ennobled are ESSENTIAL to the political spinners, pundits, in order to get their otherwise unsuitable candidate elected.

    LTE #3: This letter writer is correct in stating that Planned Parenthood provides birth control education to women. He's correct in stating that women would seek out abortions even if it was illegal to do so. He's also correct in stating that anti-abortion proponents REFUSE to see any other positive services that Planned Parenthood provides, beyond the abortions. I'm just not sure I follow the thought process of the rest of his letter.

    LTE #4: What was the issue about guns in city and county parks BEFORE the discussion began? This isn't even a DEBATE, it's more of a power struggle.

    LTE #5: There's really no need to point out the irony in this letter, but thanks for the chuckle of the day.

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  2. LTE #1.... not exactly. Constitutionally speaking the United States was founded on June 21st, 1788, and there was no mention of freedom of religion at that point. The Bill of Rights which contains the 1st Amendment right to freedoms was not ratified until December 15th, 1791, 3.5 years later. Many groups came to this continent looking for freedom to practice their religion but after a while found it not so friendly, just ask the Quakers say in Puritan Massachusetts, or the Mennonites.
    In pre-colonial and colonial times, many of the punishments against religious dissenters were very severe. For example, the Virginia Colony in 1610 had among its religious enactments, section 3, which declared: "That no man blaspheme God's holy name upon pain of death,. I n 1671 the Plymouth Colony passed a Sunday law in which death was the fate for dissenters. In 1646 the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law compelling the people to attend church on Sunday, and invoked the death penalty for those who denied the inspiration of the Bible. In 1723 Maryland enacted laws imposing fines upon those who violated the Sunday laws. In 1739 Delaware put Sunday violators in the stocks for four hours.

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    1. Apparently the forefathers of this nation did want to tell people when, where, and how to worship. The nation was founded in order to separate from British rule. The freedom of religion clause was an added amendment apparently to keep the separate states from making laws on religious practices and putting to death their own citizens.

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  3. Dotnet:

    LTE 1: Ms. VanHoy remembers her US history partially. Freedom of religion was not the reason most came over nor was it the reason the country was founded. While the majority of people in the US are of the Christian faith, the US itself is officially secular and neutral in regards toward religion. People are free to worship according to the dictates of their faith including proseltyzing, but the govt itself cannot show favoritism to any particular faith.
    LTE 2: The voters who bother to show up for the primaries tend to be the most passionate; i.e. the true believers. One of the best known strategies to winning the votes of the TB's is "by provoking, encouraging, harnessing and ennobling a deep sense of anger against individuals who agree with the values and beliefs of the country's other party". Demonizing the opponent lets the base know you are one of "us" instead of one of "them". Just typical political hogwash.
    LTE 3: Plays into LTE 2. Planned Parenthood is another bogeyman to be used as a marker to define the "us" from the "them". Facts have no place in demogagary, but knee-jerk reactions do.
    LTE 4: If guns are allowed in parks, there won't be daily gun battles taking place, but the chance of an accidental shooting will go up from zero to greater than zero. I prefer the chance remain at zero.
    LTE 5: LOL! Nothing to add to that :)

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  4. I betcha the National Organization for Marriage endorsed Mark Sanford too.

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    1. David Vitter...that guy's just nasty. It's Louisiana; they like their politicians a little bit sleazy down there.

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  5. The official religion of the North Carolina colony was Church of England, which had many strange prohibitions, including one that forbade marriage by any other than a Church of England minister. Since the interior was settled by Irish and Scottish Presbyterians and Catholics, along with Quakers and Moravians, all of whom did their own marriage ceremonies, they were essentially in rebellion against the Governor of the colony.

    The NC constitution of 1776 disestablished the official religion part, but forbade anyone but Protestants from holding elected office anywhere in the state. In 1835, the Protestant only rule was altered to allow Catholics to hold office, but non-Christians were still locked out.

    The current constitution, established in 1876, removes the Christian-only proviso, but Article 6, Section 8 still provides that "...any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God..." may not hold any public office in the state.

    Such clauses were held by the United States Supreme Court to be unenforceable in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, when the court ruled unanimously that such clauses constituted a religious test incompatible with First and Fourteenth Amendment protections.

    But the clause is still there. Ridculous?

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  6. LTE #1 - The first settlers of what is now the USA were of two parts. The first, and soon dominant, were the settlers in Jamestown, who came for commercial profit. Anyone who knows marketing recognizes Captain John Smith's writings for what they are…tracts for commercial development.

    The second were the Puritans who claimed that they were religious refugees, yet once established in the New World, became worse persecutors of those whose beliefs conflicted with theirs than any English king or Catholic pope.

    On the other hand, the last two sentences make a good, if belated, point.

    LTE #2 - "…that they truly believe a majority will support their immaturity, negativity and self-destructive message when Election Day comes?"

    Unfortunately, there is a reasonable possibility that that is what will actually happen.

    LTE # 3 - Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood are probably the best indicator of the stupidity of the so-called Republican electorate. For every pregnancy terminated by Planned Parenthood's abortion wing, a dozen or more unwanted pregnancies are prevented by their education wing.

    LTE #4 - Excellent point. It is not that easy to kill someone with a knife, a club or one's bare hands. It is all too easy to do so, especially accidentally, with a gun.

    We have known for many years that Commissioner Whitehart is a moron. Yet two years ago, thousands of fools voted to put him back on the board of county commissioners. Caveat emptor.

    LTE #5 - Ms. Finch is correct…the scary part is that it isn't really funny…because a fool like Gingrich could actually become POTUS if people get caught up in nonsensical single issue voting.

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