The American Spectator

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Moral Confusion

9.1.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

It is easy enough to see Prof. Knippenberg's snide attack on Georgetown's ministry program, but let's be serious: last time I checked, Georgetown is a ROMAN CATHOLIC institute! Why on earth would a so-called "evangelical Christian" even want to go there?!?! What's wrong with Bob Jones University, Liberty or Oral Roberts?

The author's tone is consistent with the liberal attitude of demanding "rights" when there should obviously be none. You go to a Roman Catholic school, then you need to follow the college's rules. The right of free association means these students should freely go to school somewhere else. Thankfully, at my Church and her institutions we freely reject schismatic and/or heretical groups.

More importantly, we should address why Georgetown would allow heretical, to them, groups on campus to exist in the past. I think the real story is the moral/spiritual decay of this Jesuit college (and I gather most RC colleges).
-- Andreas Giannopoulos
Los Angeles, California

Georgetown is a Catholic and Jesuit institution that has a diverse student body. The Holy Father has repeatedly called upon Catholic institutions to recover their Catholic identity. As a private Catholic University it has a duty and a right to define that identity according to the broad mandates laid out by the Holy See and by the Jesuit general in Rome. To compare it to China is obscene. I would wonder how many "conservative" institutions allow Catholics to teach (Wheaton just dismissed a Catholic convert from Evangelical Protestantism), one should ask how many Protestant universities allow much less pay for a Catholic chaplain on their campus.
-- Theodore O'Connor
Lewisville, Texas

TEDDY BULL
Re: Jim Powell's The Worst Big Government Conservative:

Jim Powell's impassioned critique of Teddy Roosevelt, although touching on important issues, is based on a radically libertarian vision of the United States that defies reality.

Let's begin with a bedrock observation: the United States is a nation of 300 million people, spread across an entire continent, with an advanced industrial-technological economy, trade relations that cover the entire globe, and confronted by powerful international enemies.

Does Mr. Powell seriously believe that this nation could operate successfully without a strong central government? Without a federal income tax or its equivalent to support that government? And without a vigorous executive to give direction and strength to that government? Granted, each of these issues raises further important questions to which conservatives and liberals have very different answers.

But Mr. Powell's suggestion that Teddy Roosevelt is somehow to blame because the United States today does not have a small, Congress-centered federal government that is supported by import duties (or whatever source of income Mr. Powell would find unobjectionable) strikes me as ridiculous.

It is impossible to have a great nation without a strong central government, with responsibilities and power commensurate with the needs and ambitions of the country. Whatever the faults of our current federal government -- and there are many -- we could never be governed by a libertarian fantasy.
-- Steven M. Warshawsky
New York, New York

Jim Powell's TR article saved me several hours of research. I have always felt I must be missing something about Teddy Roosevelt. He has always been held in high regard by conservatives but appeared to me as Hillary Clinton with a personality. State solutions were always best, particularly when they served his political interest. He hyped Upton Sinclair's work (the Michael Moore of the time) even though he knew it was nonsense.

I do think invading Canada would be cool, however.
-- C. Wagener
Lafayette, California

DEMOCRACY AND CULTURE
Re: Christopher Orlet's The Myth of the Democracy-Hating Muslim:

I'm still not convinced that Muslims are capable of democracy. Of course Muslims will claim to want democracy in a poll. They're not stupid. But that's like asking if they want world peace. The question is not would democracy be a nice thing to have, like a new television set, but what are Muslims willing to sacrifice to have democracy? Most Iraqis refuse to give up the corruption that enriches them or tribal and religious loyalties that corrode democracy. Consequently, they refuse to turn in the terrorists that swim among them and murder civilians. To Iraqis, democracy would be nice if all it cost was a purple finger. It's one thing to mildly desire democracy; it's quite another to want it enough to sacrifice, possibly your life, for it and then build a culture of the rule of law that can sustain it. Most Muslims are light years from that culture.

A growing field in economics studies the effects of culture on economic development and finds a strong cause/effect relationship. If culture determines the economics of a country, surely it has an effect on the politics, too.
-- Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Letter to the Editor

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