EXTREMES AGAIN
When is enough “enough?”
We have seen quite extensive efforts by certain individuals and groups who are seeking to eliminate any mention of the word “God” from every aspect of our national life.
The movement has taken many forms including warped readings of the governmental documents which they mis-quote in attempting to start such an idea or to sustain what they seem to think they have created.
Every time we get a re-run of such talk in the various levels of the media, I am reminded of those literary lunkheads who occur with regularity who feel it is necessary they write a novel without using the letter “e”. It can be done. It has been done. At the end, such authors have had only a book of words they called a novel which did not make use of the letter “e”. I have suggested, in the past, that such “no-e” writers should try something more difficult such as writing a review of their “no-e” novel and of its ultimate purpose without using the personal pronoun “I”.
Eliminating God from our lives would also be an ego thing.
We have, I feel, been blessed by having lived in a nation in which the founder opposed the concept of an official state church. I can't find any convincing statements,or even half-statements or random, out-of-context references which any of them said they favored total elimination of religious faith.
Far too often, those who argue either side of the current “discussion “are either ignorant of the opinion of the founders or they are ignoring its true content.
We are a nation given to the use of labels, too, which complicates the problem. We have a set of people we call “Liberals” and another set we call “Conservatives”. In theory each is separate for the other, but in actual practice, there is a gray area between the two in which individuals control the degree to which they support or demean the labeled guidelines. Far to often these in-between sentiments are ignored by the rabid individuals who are usually self-designated spokespersons for either the Liberal and Conservative groups. We do not get a true report of what the bulk of the people really believe. That shows when the issue comes to a vote of some type ...each side complains of poor support from the rest of us. Too often it is the leadership which is Liberal or Conservative in a strict sense.
Semantic problems exist. If the Conservative sees all Liberals as God-less persons he or she is making a sad error. It is not true that all Liberals are, then, automatically atheists or agnostics. And, for the Liberal person to assume that every Conservative is a Bible-thumbing/pounder hillbilly or desert-rat type is the victim of wrongful thinking. Politicians, wisely, walk with special care on any sure religious areas subject to such unmarked quicksands, swamps, chasms, winds of wild change, torrential storms and life-sapping drought as well.
We need to reform our views, redefine our objectives so we can, at least, meet and talk about them. To continue to stand apart and yell insults at each other is not solving the problem at all.
A.L.M. December 10, 2004 [c553wds]
