Hello from Horace!

Mary Honrud’s common sense commentary, “A Return To Founding Values,” provided a valuable reminder of the efforts of the framers of the Constitution to specifically avoid the repressiveness associated with creating any kind of religious nation, “Christian Nation” or otherwise. She effectively demonstrated that they understood that no religion has a lock on the truth so they drafted the religion clauses in the First Amendment to ensure freedom of belief, and therefore tolerance of diversity.

I’m not a liberal, nor a conservative, (or atheist). But, I do favor limited government intrusion so I found Ms. Honrud’s commentary reminiscent of comments a while back by Jim Nelson. (Former Montana Supreme Court justice re-elected 3 times after being appointed by Republican Governor Marc Racicot.) Your readers may find interesting his explanation that the concept, “Christian Nation,” first came into existence during the Civil War, perpetuated by Northern ministers who claimed the defeats suffered by the Northerners were God’s punishment for ignoring God in the Constitution. But when the North started winning, those same ministers proclaimed that God was rewarding the “spiritually upright” side of the conflict. The former Justice concluded, “Thus, America being founded as a ‘Christian Nation’ is fiction - and, worse, exactly contrary to what the framers were trying to negate in the First amendment.” These days we need only look to the Middle East to see the danger of growing toward a theocracy instead of a “disciplined” democracy.

Also, Tess Fahlgren’s humorous rebuttal to community closed-mindedness was entertainingly written while highlighting the consequences of intolerance. Basically, the alienation of our young people, driving them away from our rural communities in search of the freedom to express themselves by whatever means they choose. In this case the fashion styles of body piercings and tattoos. Our culture survived the long hair of the '60s and '70s, the neon colored spike hairdos of the '80s and '90s, yet every generation always thinks the ones that come after are inferior when in fact they have always yielded improvement.

The reality is … the “good old days” were never really that great! I was reminded of Ms. Fahlgren’s commentary when I saw a picture of Chris Mintz, the young veteran whom many see as a hero of the recent mass shootings at the Oregon college even though he rejects the praise. He not only had tattoos on both arms, but huge holes and/or earrings the size of dimes in both earlobes. More evidence that we can’t judge a book by its cover, nor people’s character by their fashion statements. Whether it be self-expression or religious differences, one would think that by now we’d have learned to just live and let live … the folly of wallowing in our comfort zones at the expense of embracing the future.

These impressive ladies, and your collection of talented contributors, all add character and balance to the Courier’s opinion page. I always look forward to it. Beyond entertaining it’s educational, and makes us all the better for it.

Thanks,

Horace Sence