Old-Time Religion and the GOP

Re “The Politics of Prayer,” Opinion, Jan. 25: Tony Quinn is correct when he says that religion is driving a paradigm shift in American politics. But he seems to imply that this shift comes from the will of the “deeply religious” American people, and that if the Democrats can’t get with the new program by behaving more like Republicans, then they should step aside and let a one-party system take hold.

Our society’s primary upheaval during the first half of this century will come not from terrorism but from the struggle between those who want to make this country into a Christian nation with laws based on the Bible and those who believe in the Constitution and its time-tested separation between church and state. The Southern evangelicals have gained the early upper hand, mostly from their powers of organization and fervent motivation to see their agenda forced on the rest of the country.

Abortion, the definition of marriage and the Ten Commandments are the current causes of the evangelicals, and if they succeed there, they will move on to issues that come even closer to threatening our most fundamental freedoms. I hope that a strong, secular national party will exist to counter these attacks. The Democrats seem to be the obvious choice.

R.S. Hall

Los Angeles

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Quinn’s commentary on the shifting base of the Democratic Party is right on. I am one of those disaffected Democrats with no place to go. My party has become intolerant of the moderate who still holds to basic Christian values. Yet the Republican Party, with its more traditional values, remains a party of big business at all costs and scorched-earth policies.

It’s time for the formation of the New Democratic Party: a party that supports the equal rights of women but rejects feminism; a party that supports choice but rejects abortion; a party that guarantees equal opportunity to gays but supports the institution of marriage between a man and a woman as essential to the survival of our culture; a party that treasures its natural resources but finds ways to allow for development in measured ways; a party that protects the rights of workers and their income levels but does not tax our businesses out of business; a party that leaves no one behind but does not reward laziness; a party that allows accumulation of wealth but vigorously prosecutes those who cheat and steal at the highest corporate level. If someone will start this party, I’m in!

William D. Robinson

San Clemente

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For Quinn to ignore the “Nixon strategy” in any discussion of the Southern racists’ switch to the Republican Party is disingenuous. The strategy includes changing racist rhetoric to conservative social and economic language. Bible Belt racists now control the nominating mechanism of the Republican Party, and moderates like John McCain and Colin Powell haven’t even a remote chance for nomination. Nor has any old-line Northeastern fiscal conservative and social moderate a chance for nomination for national office in the party of Lincoln.

Caldwell Williams

Los Angeles

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What is to be made of the correlation between President Bush’s piety and preemptive war, tax breaks for the wealthy, dividends being up and jobs down, the decimation of the natural world for the sake of profits, the loss of individual liberties, a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, a newly defined fortress America and naked threats to anyone who doesn’t agree with us? Just what in the life and teachings of Jesus supports or even allows this ungodly litany?

Charles Bayer

Claremont

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Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Furthermore, a decisive majority of the electorate clearly repudiated the very “values” that Bush claimed to uphold. The Democrats got trounced in 2002 because they tried to be too much like Republicans. Rather than emulating the GOP, the Democrats would be better served by calling attention to the fact that the policies of the Republicans are at odds with the values they claim to stand for.

Kurt Weldon

Winnetka