Letters

Letters to the editorMisleading million

Editor:

I am not affiliated with UCLA except that as a California
resident I pay

taxes to support it. I must point out some factual errors in the
Viewpoint

article written by John Shapley Oct. 24.

The gathering of a million men in Washington, D.C. was not the
largest

civil rights demonstration ever assembled. The veterans’ rights
march in

1969 was bigger. Moreover, it was probably the largest assembly
of black

men. NOT black people. Women were asked to stay at home with
their

children.

The official U.S. Park Service count put the gathering at
400,000. Not

one million. I sincerely hope that the gathering will change the
world, but

this article and the misleading statements in it are not
helping.Kathryn Wales

California

Record setter

Editor:

I am a born again, Bible-pounding, fundamentalist,
Evangelical

Christian. I would like to comment on J.D. Whitlock’s Oct. 19
column,

"Separating Church and State."

Whitlock’s history is simply not factual. He says the founding
fathers

were deists and unitarians based on an obscure foreign relations
document

entitled, "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" by an unnamed author.
This

assertion flies in the face of historical evidence:

George Washington was the first president of the United States
and

governed with the all but unanimous consent of the American
people. At his

inauguration, President Washington got down on his knees and
kissed the

Bible. He then led the entire Congress to a two-hour worship
service at a

church in New York City. No doubt this is an example of how a
politician

will prostitute his real principles in an effort to ensure
his

re-election.

Fisher Ames was the author of the First Amendment. In 1801, he
wrote an

article in Palladium magazine entitled "School Books." This
article decries

the use of school books other than the Bible.

Commonly considered one of the three most influential founding
fathers,

Benjamin Rush also wrote "A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a
School

Book." This 1791 paper concludes with a prophetic warning, "If
we were to

remove the Bible from schools, I lament that we would be wasting
so much

time and money in punishing crimes and taking so little pains to
prevent

them."

As a final note, the Enlightenment did not make unitarians or
deists of

the founding fathers. They were, in fact, so appalled at the
unprecedented

level of bloodshed and violence in "enlightened" France that
revolutionary

war hero Thomas Paine was made an outcast because of his
association with

the French cause.

Whitlock and I will never agree on whether or not his morality
should be

legislated over mine, but we should at least be able to agree on
facts that

are a matter of historical record.Robert Van de Water

Graduate student

Chemical Engineering