Letters to the Editor

Promotion of smoke shops is appalling

Who on the Daily Bruin staff felt that it was necessary to publish detailed directions on how to roll a joint (“Medical marijuana sets up shop,” April 20)? I found these directions extremely appalling and disrespectful to both the university and its students.

Just recently, the Daily Bruin staff apologized for selling the front page of the paper to raise funds ““ now the same page that is blatantly providing advertising for the shops opening up in Westwood. I have been a supporter of reforming marijuana laws, but this article felt like a slap in the face.

The fact that these completely unnecessary images were published on this particular day appears no more than a cheap promotion of a drug meant to serve a medical purpose.

Tiffany Nocon

Second-year, English

Oppose anti-life, not Obama’s speech

As an educated Catholic student, I do not agree with the approach in Negar Tehrani’s recent column (“Notre Dame needs to grow up, put differences aside and let Obama speak,” April 16).

True, it would not be wrong or morally conflicting to have President Obama speak at a Catholic institution ““ abortion is not the only pro-life injustice in the world. However, pro-life advocates ““ who extend beyond the Catholic Church ““ choosing to oppose his presence at commencement should not be against Obama himself but the entire anti-life movement in general.

Instead of coming from the standpoint of: “We don’t want you to come because you are pro-abortion” ““ which is indeed juvenile and shallow ““ we ought to be saying: “For the sake of advocating for life, we are taking this opportunity to tell you we do not agree with what you are doing.”

If the individual students at Notre Dame actually cared for the matter ““ not just because they are nominally Catholic and that’s what they “should believe” ““ what a huge statement they would be making. “Mr. President, one of the reasons you won the election was because you mobilized the youth to believe in you. So hear us now when we say: We do not agree. We are disappointed with your decisions and failure to protect life.”

Yes, Obama is a political figure and not a religious one ““ but above both of those things, he is the leader of our nation, and what he stands for matters.

Notre Dame has a great opportunity to remind him of those truths.

Janice Chow

Second-year, physiological science

Bible is not a cultural cure-all

In Alexander Pherson’s April 16 column, “Overly secular government is against founders’ intent,” he argues that a moral society needs a “commonly agreed upon standard of right and wrong,” such as the Bible.

OK, but the Bible is a text that is broad, vague and self-contradictory enough to be used as a tool for all sorts of opinions.

The myriad differing sects of Christianity ““ many convinced that all other Christian denominations are heretical and hell-bound ““ demonstrate this. And the Bible can be used to justify either side of many contentious issues, including abortion, gay and interracial marriage, divorce and even slavery.

So while it’s attractive to believe that the Bible holds the ultimate prescription for a moral society, the fact remains that people regularly interpret the text to fit their own subjective biases.

Marjorie Burns

Fourth-year, English

Reason, not religion, should rule

As much as Alex Pherson fears the changing tides of American politics (“Overly secular government is against founders’ intent,” April 16), going back to the good ole days isn’t the answer.

Despite what Sunday school or Bible camp might preach, America wasn’t founded on “deeply religious” principles, as Pherson so vehemently claims. The founding fathers and their ideologies were products of the Enlightenment, hugely distrustful of placing faith above reason. In fact, many were only Deists.

A significant feature of even their political classical liberalism was a disdain for the status quo and convention.

I’m not saying American culture and values do not have considerable ties to Judeo-Christian principles.

Indeed, Pherson is correct in that the founding fathers derived their notion of inherent freedom from belief in a higher power.

But the very assertion of independence shows a desire to take charge of their own destiny and distance themselves from a God many believed to be distant and uninvolved. The birth of the United States is steeped in a humanistic yearning for autonomy and faith in human potential, not in the divine.

I find it odd how Pherson sees conservative values as the only buffer against moral decay. Lest we forget, it was religious tradition that either spawned or justified British tyranny, colonial imperialism, slavery, sexism and the eradication of Native American culture, not to mention all the Crusades, Jihads, Inquisitions and witch hunts. Secularism didn’t give rise to the Holocaust; Hitler was an adamant polemicist for tradition.

Upholding faith above reason is dangerous, especially today. Just look at the pope’s condemnation of condoms. Or Joseph Kony and the atrocities perpetrated by his Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The moment people lose faith in themselves and start turning to external validation, corruption and ignorance are inevitable. Belief in an absolute power is far from necessary for a society to be moral.

If the American public is becoming more and more secular, it is not a result of religion being eradicated from politics. It is a reflection of the will of the people. Religion is just another factor among many as a determinant for a culture’s values.

That is democracy in action. This change does not mean we want to lie or kill or steal at whim. It means we now govern ourselves on reason and a genuine concern for humanity. A stubborn insistence to cling to tradition treads the fine line between a rightful opinion and an anti-democratic absolutism.

America is a democracy, not a theocracy. Pherson’s call for the preservation of religiosity in politics defies the ideals of the Enlightenment and, as even he observes, the will of the American people.

Jordan Manalastas

First-year, political science

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