I’ll take a wild guess that the writer of The Herald’s July 7 editorial, “No foul: On-field religious actions a tradition in many areas” is a member of the religious super-majority: Christians. The editorial is provincial and parochial. The writer shows callousness toward non-believers’ feelings and gives short shrift to our rights to be free from religion in our government.
I remember my football coach telling our team to bow our heads for prayer before a game. For me, that was awkward and alienating. I was reared in a secular, humanitarian home where Jesus of Nazareth was a transcendent person but not the son of God, of virgin birth, who was resurrected or performed miracles. I wondered whether my agnosticism cost me playing time. The defense that it’s always been done — as with many things in history — is vacuous.
Americans can practice their religions 24/7 on private property, but please keep it off public property that people like me are forced to pay for through taxation. Equal time is no solution. I’m sure most people don’t want to hear my anti-theistic belief that believing in the supernatural inexorably leads to opinions without factual basis; that once people start making stuff up, there’s no limit to what they will believe, in a country that already suffers from a lack of critical thinking.
Most know that Europeans sailed to our East Coast to escape government-imposed religious beliefs. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado recently said to a standing ovation that “The church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church.” Former Pennsylvania state senator and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano stoked a crowd by claiming the separation of church and state is a “myth” and that “in November were are going to take our state back, my God will make it so.” Our U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores won election with the slogan “God, Family, and Country.” You don’t think we free-thinkers are nervous? No Sharia law, but Christian law.
Meanwhile our newspaper adoringly opines that public gatherings show “unity and cooperation that is needed to build communities.” To quote one of my favorite local writers, Italo J. Zarate, “Hoo-boy!”
Barry R. Benton
Brownsville
Golfers
for sale
Golfers all over the country are in a state of consternation. The Saudis just bought up the brightest names in golf for a parallel world professional golf tour. The Saudis are providing huge payouts for virtually all who play in their tournaments.
The 1% class in America are like the Saudis. They constitute exactly the kind of aristocracy that our ancestors fought to outlaw. The Founders prohibited super-privileged titans from waltzing in the front door by outright banning titles of nobility in the U.S. Constitution. But the new American lords of finance and industry have been sneaking in through the back door since the 1970s, when financial de-regulation first began.
Huge, gargantuan money buys whatever it wants, including politicians and elections, newspapers, private armies, space travel, monopolies, Hollywood starlets and golf professionals.
One has to wonder if economic democracy is dead and gone in America.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
