Letters to the editorMisleading million
Editor:
I am not affiliated with UCLA except that as a California resident I pay
taxes to support it. I must point out some factual errors in the Viewpoint
article written by John Shapley Oct. 24.
The gathering of a million men in Washington, D.C. was not the largest
civil rights demonstration ever assembled. The veterans' rights march in
1969 was bigger. Moreover, it was probably the largest assembly of black
men. NOT black people. Women were asked to stay at home with their
children.
The official U.S. Park Service count put the gathering at 400,000. Not
one million. I sincerely hope that the gathering will change the world, but
this article and the misleading statements in it are not helping.Kathryn Wales
California
Record setter
Editor:
I am a born again, Bible-pounding, fundamentalist, Evangelical
Christian. I would like to comment on J.D. Whitlock's Oct. 19 column,
"Separating Church and State."
Whitlock's history is simply not factual. He says the founding fathers
were deists and unitarians based on an obscure foreign relations document
entitled, "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" by an unnamed author. This
assertion flies in the face of historical evidence:
George Washington was the first president of the United States and
governed with the all but unanimous consent of the American people. At his
inauguration, President Washington got down on his knees and kissed the
Bible. He then led the entire Congress to a two-hour worship service at a
church in New York City. No doubt this is an example of how a politician
will prostitute his real principles in an effort to ensure his
re-election.
Fisher Ames was the author of the First Amendment. In 1801, he wrote an
article in Palladium magazine entitled "School Books." This article decries
the use of school books other than the Bible.
Commonly considered one of the three most influential founding fathers,
Benjamin Rush also wrote "A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School
Book." This 1791 paper concludes with a prophetic warning, "If we were to
remove the Bible from schools, I lament that we would be wasting so much
time and money in punishing crimes and taking so little pains to prevent
them."
As a final note, the Enlightenment did not make unitarians or deists of
the founding fathers. They were, in fact, so appalled at the unprecedented
level of bloodshed and violence in "enlightened" France that revolutionary
war hero Thomas Paine was made an outcast because of his association with
the French cause.
Whitlock and I will never agree on whether or not his morality should be
legislated over mine, but we should at least be able to agree on facts that
are a matter of historical record.Robert Van de Water
Graduate student
Chemical Engineering