ABQjournal: Readers Say Keeping America Safe Isn’t Only About Money

THE RAVINGS of John Dendahl illustrate why he was demoted by his own party. He says that “the Left refuses to expel” those who suggest “America had it coming on Sept. 11, 2001.” Give me a break.
Is “the Left” some organization that can expel people? Did anyone ever say “America had it coming”? I never heard anyone say it. However, it is true that the CIA trained Osama bin Laden and unleashed him on the Soviets. Then, when the Soviets left Afghanistan, the U.S. abandoned the Afghans, providing fertile ground for the growth of the Taliban.
One thing leads to another. Is it traitorous to say so? Sept. 11 was one tragic day in a sequence of tragic U.S. policy decisions.
George Bush’s victory was the slimmest by a sitting president since 1916. Bush ran a fear-mongering and smearing campaign just as he did against John McCain four years ago. He fooled a lot of honest people into hating and fearing John Kerry. He has nothing for which to be proud.
Bush has never done “the people’s work.” He is child of privilege, the “folksiest” of the Bush Dynasty but not one of us folks who work for a living. The rich will get richer during the next four years and the poor will die in Iraq.
B.W. THOMPSON
Albuquerque

Threat of theocracy: Will one religious outlook dominate U.S. secular policy? by VB Price

The prospect of one religious outlook dominating secular policy in America deeply worried the founders of our Constitution. While most founders professed religious faith, they understood that the tyranny of one religion over all others constituted a pernicious form of oppression, as anyone familiar with the religious brutalities of European history would attest. That’s why the Constitution’s First Amendment has what is known as the “establishment clause,” which forbids an official, or unofficial, state religion in America.

Nowhere in the Constitution are the words “separation of church and state” found. They are unnecessary. The establishment clause states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

When one religious point of view has political dominance in lawmaking circles, it threatens the free exercise of all other religions and spiritual points of view. The founders wanted nothing to do with such a theocratic setup, in which one religion or coalition of religious persuasions made laws favorable only to that point of view.