Your note to Mikey Weinstein

I have watched people like you try to subject this country to your very narrow viewpoint, and the thing that scares the hell out of me is that there are those that even listen to your drivel. People of your ilk are only happy when they can impose their view on those around them. You forget that each of us has the right under the constitution to have and speak our own opinions. That is true equality, not the one sided view that you speak. If you would bother to read history you might find that this country was founded on the belief in God, and Freedom of religion does not give you or anyone else the right to foist your belief on everyone else. Every cadet at the military institution has as much right to speak the words “so help me God” as you do to spout your one sided garbage. They are as entitled to do that as you are to fight it regardless of your interpretation of our wonderful constitution.

(name withheld)

Dear Sir,

I am reminded of the lyric from an Eagles song: “…they say that anger is just love disappointed.” There is some truth to this. Nobody I know loves this Country more than Mr. Weinstein, and he has every right to be angry over the fact that men and women in positions of power over others in the U.S. Military have abandoned their oaths to defend the Constitution and instead are using their positions of power to impose and inflict their bigoted, Fundamentalist/Dominionist Christian beliefs on others.

You refer to Mr. Weinstein’s advocacy for the religious freedoms of service members and veterans as “one sided garbage” – that is indeed rich. Are you so intellectually impoverished that you can’t even see that you are the one spouting “one sided” views and projecting your own actions on Mr. Weinstein. Even the village idiot can see this. There is also rich irony in your assertion that it is Mr. Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that is seeking to foist its belief on others; the reality is that it is Fundamentalist/Dominionist Christian bigots who are seeking to inflict and impose their beliefs on everyone else and it is Mr. Weinstein and our Foundation that is fighting to protect the religious freedom of all service members and veterans regardless of their religious beliefs. You are clearly just parroting what you hear on either hate radio or opinion TV (that tries to pose as News) or both. It is ignorant people like you who are seeking to inflict your views on everyone else and trying to use a smokescreen to further your goals. Every year we hear the same canards from Faux News that Christianity and Christmas are under attack, while it is in fact the Fundamentalist/Dominionist Christian automatons and their hate-addled leaders who are waging a crusade against the freedom and rights of everyone else. Trust me, no one is fooled by your pathological mendacity.

You also seem to be under the misguided impression that history backs up your viewpoints; unfortunately for fools such as you, both Mr. Weinstein and I have actually read history. In addition to American history we’ve actually read biographies of the Founding Fathers and their writings, not what Fox News distorts on a daily basis. If you’re truly interested in what our Founding Fathers thought about matters such as those debated by Mr. Weinstein last night it would be worthwhile for you to consider these quotes from those very Founding Fathers:

“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” ~George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 178

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.” ~John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788

“The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” ~1797 Treaty of Tripoli signed by John Adams

“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for
honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.” ~John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” -Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. We have solved … the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.” ~Thomas Jefferson: in a speech to the Virginia Baptists, 1808

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814,

“The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.” ~James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real Religion”

“Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.” ~James Madison, letter, 1822

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” ~Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

“The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion.” ~Charles Pinckney, Constitutional Convention, 1787

And so, kind sir, any literate individual of even nominal intelligence can see clearly that you are deluded when you say that this nation was founded on the belief in God. Maybe next time before you hurry off another ridiculous missive you will take the time to remind yourself of your own intellectual paucity and instead open a book and try educating and improving yourself.

Sincerely,

Akiva David Miller
Director of Veterans Affairs
Military Religious Freedom Foundation