Letters to the Editor
Jkalos
Published Letters: 486 Editor's Choice: 3
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@ondolette
[Read the article: House Democrats reject telecom amnesty, warrantless surveillance]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for stating it so clearly. I once had a discussion with a chinese professor who told me that what they had done to the Tibetans was no different than what americans had done to the native populations of north america. He was surprised when I agreed with him. Yes, we perpetrated those kinds of horrors too. And I am ashamed of all it. It a stain on my country that will never be removed. And what will you tell your children, and their children's children, who will be bitterly ashamed of you? It is always the same with the industrialized cultures, whether they be communist or capitalistic:they think they know how everyone should live, and will kill to make everyone live just like they do.
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I met
[Read the article: House Democrats reject telecom amnesty, warrantless surveillance]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]an old tibetan fellow once named Palden Gyatso, a monk who had been imprisoned in Tibet in camps for over twenty years for refusing to recognize chinese rule of tibet. Once when they mistakenly let him out, he walked up out of Tibet into India across the mountains. I was his host at my school. He was the kindest and gentlest man I have ever met, and the stories of horror he told me that he saw done to his friends and to him still make me sad. But he told me he did not hate the chinese, for what they had done to themselves in commiting these evils was far worse punishment than anyone would ever wish on anyone. Those poor people, he said: and at first I thought he meant the tibetans. But he was speaking of the chinese, who had twisted themselves in harming others for no good reason.
He was a better human being than me. IF I were tibetan, I think I would be more like those burning the shops. But Palden-la gives me an ideal to aim at. Its good to meet people who are better than you. It teaches you to look up.
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What charms
[Read the article: The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]a logic teacher's heart most about reading Glenn is his comebacks (as with the one to the first poster). Sir, you make this logic teacher proud. A delight to read you.
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Some words from a true American patriot
[Read the article: The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives, and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied yours must be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness.
For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there. These, therefore, they brand with such nick-names as their enmity chooses gratuitously to impute.
I have left the world, in silence, to judge of causes from their effects; and I am consoled in this course, my dear friend, when I perceive the candor with which I am judged by your justice and discernment; and that, notwithstanding the slanders of the saints, my fellow citizens have thought me worthy of trusts. The imputations of irreligion having spent their force; they think an imputation of change might now be turned to account as a holster for their duperies. I shall leave them, as heretofore, to grope on in the dark."
--Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. Samuel Smith, August 6, 1816.
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What Wright said
[Read the article: The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]reminds me of this, stated by Frederick Douglass called "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July"?
"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."
Really, to those who study history at all, it does not seem strange at all what Wright said. What does America mean to those living on Pine Ridge "Indian" reservation, whose infant mortality rate matches those of third world countries? To blacks who are incarcerated at an astonishing rate? If only there was a God, he would surely hate all this too.
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I find
[Read the article: The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that I cannot bring myself to say "God damn America," but only, "If there were a God, and he were just and good, then he would probably damn America." Or something like that.
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Ah, peeps,
[Read the article: The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]what a grand quote from Langston Hughes. Let's hear it again:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!