Cal Thomas on Religious Conservatives

* In “Where Can Religious Conservatives Go?” (Commentary, Oct. 23) Cal Thomas misquotes the beginning of the Declaration of Independence in a way that has dangerous implications. He states that unhappy religious conservatives can choose to retreat from modern society, or try to rebuild it to their liking via the political process. Or they can remember what the founders of our country said: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another.J.J. . “

This is a blatant misquotation. The second “one” added at the end of the quotation is spurious. The declaration spoke of one people (America) dissolving the political bands which connected them to another people (England). It goes on to describe the separate but equal status that the two nations thereafter should enjoy. In contrast, Thomas’ version has the American people dissolving the bands that connect their own society together (“which have connected them with one another”)! This is virtually incitement to anarchy, of the nut-militia sort.

RICHARD E. DICKERSON

Los Angeles

* Thomas once again demonstrates the kind of simplistic intransigence that tends to anger those whose views do not mirror his own. Since when and by whom are issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer “deemed to have religious origins”? Abortion is about a woman’s right to her own anatomy. Marriage, no matter to whom it applies, is about love, a concept which embraces far more than Christianity. Prayer in schools, though indeed involving religion, is really about protecting the public from precisely the kind of monomaniacal control that drove the Founding Fathers onto these shores in the first place.

With Thomas and friends like born-again felon Charles Colson looking to dictate what we should all be doing with our hearts, minds and bodies, it’s not our political leadership that espouses intolerance. What happened to the dozens of other religions in our great land? How about those who don’t follow any?

I do applaud Thomas for his one wonderful idea, breathtaking in its simplicity and long, long overdue: Go off and work on your kingdom of heaven, religious conservatives; leave the rest of us heathens to wallow in our morally “imploded” but free society.

DAVID RESKIN

Los Angeles