By Scott Nesler
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This letter to the editor from the St. Louis Post Dispatch on July 15, 2010 stirred many thoughts. If one wishes to paint their ideology with a single broad stroke, such as conservatism or Christianity, he or she needs to accept the burden a minority representation of the ideology inflicts on mankind. Mr. Pitts, I favor your point of view. You are a man, tempted by the same immoral boundaries. I hear little if any hypocrisy in your words and will not condemn when your belief is contrary to mine. For it is the dynamics of our differences containing the substance of understanding. |
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Many religions have a fundamental creed of forgiveness. Wikipedia defines forgiveness as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake. Forgiveness and forgetfulness are not synonyms. Mistakes are opportunities to build upon. Let not the atrocities of Adolph Hitler be erased as an example to learn from. And let's not forget the numerous errors Thomas Edison made identifying the carbon filament for the incandescent light bulb.
I know as much of God's existence as anyone. My belief lies on the side of hope. Churches of many denomination provide a societal good. Though a church is not God and in many cases does not propagate understanding or the search for truth. There are those with a desire to inflict church doctrine onto unwilling participants. Few go as far as to legislate this doctrine.
Some proclaim America was built on Christian faith. This is hard to believe after reading Thomas Paine quote, "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity." For those clamoring to the idea our country was founded on Christian principles, Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason provides a historical reference. A little research will reveal many founding fathers were deist who promoted reason and freethinking. Individuals such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson argued against institutionalized religion and Christian doctrines.
From the pen of Thomas Jefferson, "The bill for establishing religious freedom... I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."
Something Thomas Jefferson held dearly, though many conservatives would like to diminish, is public education. Thomas Jefferson, "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." And a second quote from Jefferson on education, "The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.".
Lastly, many of our forefathers feared the extremism of corporate interest. "I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- wrote Jefferson (to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:69)"
Mr. Pitts, I don't see hypocrisy in journalism. Though imperialism is another story.
NOTE: The pictorial letter to the editor eludes to Leonard Pitt's Op-Ed entry published in the Miami Herald on July, 7, 2010. Click here to read what prompted this individual's point of view.
