LETTER TO THE EDITOR: God has been pushed aside in today’s society

Now that we are into the election season, it is expected that there will be speech after speech by prospective candidates. Many will close with the patriotic sounding phrase, “God Bless America.” Some writers in the Public Forum column will also end letters with that phrase. Now, I would like to ask the pundits and politicians, why? Can anyone tell me just why God would bless America as it is today? The politicians and pressure groups have pushed God out of our classrooms and out of our national life for a couple of generations. Public prayer is frowned upon and often forbidden. Our national holidays have become an excuse to indulge in all kinds of excessive behavior. Thanksgiving is equated with eating turkey, no thanks to God there. Christmas is “winter break” and Easter, “spring break,” which appears to be an excuse among some youth to hold one big bacchanalia. We have celebrated entertainers who cannot speak one declarative sentence without using multiple curses or vulgarities. Much of what is produced for TV or in Hollywood is either borderline pornographic, full of vulgarities, violent — or all three. Communities are forbidden to display the Ten Commandments or anything Christian. But, we must accept any and all other beliefs and every evil as a dictum of being tolerant of others. There are those who wish to remove the words “In God We Trust” from our money, as well as Christian monuments in public cemeteries. We have five Supreme Court judges who decided to redefine marriage. (Incidentally, the Supreme Court offers opinions; only Congress can make law.) We have a president who claims we are a secular nation. (Did he ever read Washington’s inaugural address?) We have politicians at the highest levels of our government who continually lie — excuse me, “misspeak.” We have organizations and businesses that stoop to the lowest level of depravity, as in the Planned Parenthood scandal. We have community “leaders” who encourage people to burn, loot and destroy the property of others over some perceived injustice. We have government and private agencies that routinely steal from the public coffers to fund ridiculous and wasteful projects. We have perhaps millions of our citizens in a drug-induced haze who steal and murder to support their habit. We are being invaded, with government approval, by people who wish to impose a different culture or religion upon us and have no intention of assimilating as Americans. We have leaders who use euphemisms to change the meaning of words in order to make their ideas more acceptable. Our system of public education leaves much to be desired, especially in the area of civics and history. For decades, youth have been taught, from the most prestigious universities to kindergarten, that all religions and cultures are equivalent and that we must be tolerant and accepting of them all. Secular humanism is taught in almost every public school and university. I could go on, but it is too depressing. In the slightly more than eight decades of my life, I can say without reservation that the America of my youth has been radically transformed — much of it in the last eight years. My parents and grandparents wouldn’t recognize it. Mr. Obama has kept his promise to transform America. I ask again — can anyone tell me why God would “bless” America, an America that has rejected Him from the highest levels of leadership and according to some studies, 50 percent of the population? Instead, we should be humbly begging for mercy and forgiveness.

Marjorie C. Davis Ellendale