Conservative Christians Best the Liberal Lions

Re “Christian Conservatives Must Not Compromise,” Commentary, Nov. 5: This piece is extremist. It is also representative of a cancer that is growing in America. Religion is being co-opted for the worst kind of demagoguery. Forty-eight percent the country is not “evil” for voting against George W. Bush, and did not “vomit” on “God, family and country.”

Leonard Wayne

La Crescenta

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I know that you’re all concerned about giving equal time to alternate viewpoints. But printing Pastore’s rant is really going overboard. He demonizes half of the country for believing things that he doesn’t. Calling liberalism “evil” does nothing to further the cause. And I hate to tell Pastore this, but a 51% majority does not equal a resounding rejection of the left’s “agenda” (as if the right did not have one of those). I’m scratching my head right now wondering what this could possibly do to enhance the discourse in what Pastore refuses to believe is a gravely fracture nation.

Mark Berube

Brooklyn, N.Y.

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I have two burning questions: First, for the next term, who is going to head up the Department of Vice and Virtue, and second, can anyone suggest a good tailor to make burkas for my four daughters?

Christina Wright

Calabasas

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I am fed up with Christians speaking on behalf of all Christians, especially evangelicals. I am an evangelical Christian who works at an evangelical liberal arts institution and received my master’s degree at an evangelical college in the Midwest. After years of being a Republican, it was this administration that caused me to switch to the Democratic Party. Yes, I voted for John F. Kerry. I’m against the war in Iraq, I believe in rights for all, I believe that poverty, homelessness, AIDS and lack of healthcare are moral issues and, yes, I’m a Christian. So, please, don’t speak for all of us, because some of us don’t appreciate it.

Elena Yee

Santa Barbara

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So voters have “rejected liberalism” as an “evil ideology”? If so, barely more than half of them did. But since when has our political discourse been framed in terms of such literal demonizing? I suspect that most Bush voters didn’t vote expressly against liberalism, and if they did, it wasn’t because they consider it “evil.” And I suspect that most Kerry voters didn’t vote expressly in support of liberalism.

I voted for Kerry because he described the kind of country I want to live in. Pastore seems to favor the kind of country the Taliban want to govern: absolute intolerance and hate fed by absolutely zealous religious fundamentalism. I pray he’s wrong in imagining he speaks for a majority of the American people.

Timothy L. Pagaard

Chula Vista

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Pastore should be aware that the so-called Christian right in the U.S. is not the object of the world’s envy, but its contempt. There is nothing remotely Christian about this article and the pride, arrogance, ignorance and sheer hatefulness it manifests.

Peggy Mason

Kinburn, Ontario

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Jonathan Chait’s Nov. 5 commentary, “Those Who Voted for Bush May Be In for a Big Surprise,” begins with, “Dear rural/exurban Christian conservative voters.” I voted for Bush, but unlike Chait’s stereotype, I live in the core of a large metropolis and have an office in a skyscraper. I devote significant time and resources toward easing the burdens of homeless youths, support gay marriage, am not a conservative and never go to church.

So why did I vote for Bush? Because I have no desire to align myself with a party that is emphatically bent on framing middle Americans as “rural/exurban Christian conservative voters.” It’s as silly and childish as asserting that all Californians are left-wing, commie, pinko voters. Folks like Chait really need to grow up.

Mark Tarnowski

Minneapolis

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) stated that the Democrats in Congress would dig their heels in and be stubborn to support their core values. She said it’s not important what religion you believe in, it’s what America you believe in.

Mrs. Pelosi, as a Navy veteran and born-again believer, I believe we all believe in America. However, as our forefathers had in mind when they framed the Constitution, this is a nation founded under God. When the liberal Democrats realize this, I just might change whom I vote for.

George Teats Sr.

Downey