Buchanan on Moral Standards

Regarding Pat Buchanan’s latest diatribe (“We’re in a War for the Soul of America,” Column Right, Sept. 11): “Whose beliefs,” he writes, “shall form the basis of law?” Whose indeed? What arrogance!

We should all reject the idea--implicit in Buchanan’s piece--that if it ain’t Christian, it ain’t moral, as well as the notion that he, or any other self-anointed saint, knows the mind of God well enough to impose his idea of morality on the rest of us.

Among all the claptrap and specious argument in Buchanan’s column, one statement needs especially to be singled out for exposure and criticism: the absurdly false and dangerous assertion that “ideas have consequences.” Mr. Buchanan, only actions have consequences; ideas emphatically do not. The American system of laws is the most moral system on Earth precisely because it recognizes this fact. In the U.S., we punish only unlawful conduct . We do not define any thoughts as being illegal--or, for that matter, evil. We don’t have thought police, and we don’t ban ideas in the United States of America.

Sorry, Mr. Buchanan, you are not living in Spain under the Inquisition, nor am I, thank God.

MICHAEL P. ROSE

Los Angeles