I thought Barney Beeksma’s bigotry in Sound Off (Whidbey News-Times, Nov. 27) was bad, but Christine Campbell’s (Letters, Dec. 7) takes the prize.
Most readers of anything but Christian literature know that humans inhabited North America something like 15,000 years before any Christians arrived, or about 9,000 years before today’s creationists believe Earth even existed. By 1600, about a million natives were living here, without whose assistance early Christian settlers would have had an even harder time of it than they did.
The newcomers responded in the Christian fashion of the day, by slaughtering their hosts, either on purpose or by means of venereal disease and other plagues, confiscating and polluting their lands, decimating their bison and other sources of food and clothing and converting the survivors to Christianity, often by force.
It’s true that many early Christian settlers came here for religious reasons. Emigration was the Pilgrims’ only hope for practicing their bigotry without interference. In their New World they instituted Thanksgiving and burned witches.
Many of our Christian forefathers were slave owners. More than a few were members of the Ku Klux Klan. During World War II, our “nothing to fear but fear itself” government interned thousands of patriotic Americans of foreign ancestry.
English and “our culture” were immaterial to the Navajos, who confounded the Japanese code-breakers. Japanese-Americans and African-Americans in combat have proved to be every bit the equal of their white brethren. Today, Asian science and engineering students typically leave English-as-first-language laggards in the dust.
Sad to say, the end of racial and religious intolerance in this country is still not in sight, and many people like the United States of America just fine as long as everybody acts and speaks the way they do. Love it or leave it.
What about “In God We Trust?” Hardly anybody seems to remember what Jesus said of a Roman coin, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Is that not separation of church and state?
He also said, “The meek shall inherit the Earth.” What will jingoists inherit? Stay tuned.
James M. Bruner
Oak Harbor
