I know we, as citizens of the United States, have trouble defining our culture. What I did not realize is how many might have forgotten where our nation came from. Perhaps with public education the way it has to be today, some never learned the truth to begin with. This was never more apparent than when guest commentator Scott Britt decided to write the Emerald with his personal, and rather inaccurate, definition of American culture (“Bush’s crusade is anti-American,” ODE, 02/20).
To say I was upset when I read his misinformed attack on our president is an extreme understatement. The title of his article, “Bush’s crusade is anti-American,” still makes me shake my head in disbelief — it was Britt’s backlash against the leader of our country that was anti-American. He says Bush and his party “want to change the culture into a more Christian” one. He needs to remember that our nation began with believers of the Bible, so our President is not initiating a change, but reflecting the influence of true American roots.
Yes, I realize some of you are reading this and asking, “But I thought our country was founded on freedom of religion, so how can this person tell me it was Christianity that initiated the land of the free?” Please allow me to explain. Pilgrims and Puritans did not risk their lives to come to this land and later fight the Revolutionary War with their mother country Britain over some tea. Taxes were not really the point. Reformation was.
Christians fled to this new land to practice Christianity without fear of death for not believing what others told them to. To ensure that no one would feel the same threat that our forefathers did, they proclaimed that citizens of the United States would be free to practice any religion. The war we are fighting now is to preserve those same rights, not destroy them.
Right now, we have a president in office who is willing to stand up for what our forefathers believed in and isn’t afraid to proclaim his beliefs. Unfortunately, those like Britt can’t see the sense in having a Christian man be the leader of a nation founded on the principles of Christian faith. Some people are happier defining our nation’s culture as “American heathen culture,” as Britt called it.
President Bush is not reinventing the wheel here. The Constitution we live by was signed by men who were Christian and those who were not still believed this nation should be founded on the same principles that the Bible sets forth. We have also had many, many Christian presidents. Many would be devastated today to see the attitudes of some of the nation’s extreme anti-Americans ignoring the Bible and defending abortion and drug use.
George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” He is supported by others, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower said, “The recognition of the supreme being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor American way of life.”