America's laws are to protect minority from 'tyranny of the mob'

Editor:

I take exception to last Sundays column by Mindy Jeffers about removal of the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama, and I consider the Gallup Poll she cited to be irrelevant. The majority of people look for simple answers to complex problems. Studies show that Americans will vote against the Bill of Rights today.

The central core problem is not religion but the protection of minority rights. If the rights of the minority are not protected then we do not have rule of law; rather, we have what our political forefathers feared most - the tyranny of the mob. The writers of the Constitution feared pure democracy because it served well only until the majority finds out they can exploit the minority. A Christian republic is as distasteful to me as is an Islamic republic. Both deny our fundamental rights as humans. Both are paternalistic from fear that we may be uncontrollable.

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas had it right in spades. If you dont show your faith by how you live, symbols mean nothing. We neither need a state-sanctioned religion nor granite monument. We need two things: for the rights of the minority to be not just respected, but protected; and for ethics and religion to flourish in the home and at church, mosque or temple without the government butting into our personal beliefs and religion.

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What would Jesus do? I dont know for sure what he would do, but his teachings were clearly against gratuitous public display of religion and (self) righteousness, and we should start there.

Douglas Martin

Evans