I am writing to counter the extreme views presented by Geary Foertsch, which under the First Amendment are permissible despite his historical and ethical errors, and his misconstrued idea of what being an American is.
Mr. Foertsch, who with his obvious German surname, is surely from immigrant stock, and perhaps had ancestors fleeing German religious or political oppression in the early or mid 19th century, thinks the USA is nothing more than the continuation of the 17th and 18th Century European world.
Mr. Foertsch also cites the controversial political scientist Sam Huntington who proposed that the post-Cold War world will be an inevitable "clash of cultures" which will destroy civilization, which in his view means the 17th and 18th century European-based Western countries. Huntington actually divided the entire world into 10 monolithic chunks based mostly on the dominant religion in some cases and ethnicity in others. For example, Huntington lumped Indonesia in with Nigeria and the heavily Inca society of Bolivia with mostly European Argentina. The theories of Huntington are a bleak theory with little basis in reality.
Citing Ann Coulter would be in most cases laughable, but it seems Mr. Foertsch gives her great credit for being a deep thinker on this topic. We can all have a good laugh about this.
The United States was founded above all else on the principles of John Locke and not on 17th and 18th century Christianity. That era of religion was one of hate and strife with at least three of the original colonies being founded to prevent religious discrimination. The major Founding Fathers, though "Christian" in some sense of the word, made certain it would play no role in the government of the new nation.
America's strength has always been its accommodation and often begrudging welcoming of immigrants by those who did not like that these people were different from them. The English did not like the Scotch-Irish who did not like the Catholics and the Irish, who did not like the politically liberal Germans who did not like the Italians and the Chinese and the Poles, and all of them hated the black slaves.
The Puritans killed the Pilgrims and Catholics and the Quakers.The United States could have avoided things like the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the immigration restriction laws of the post WW I era if its citizens stood up and decried the obvious prejudice and hate.
The answer to the question Mr. Foertsch put forth, "Who are we?" is simple. We are the hodgepodge of everyone who has sought the economic opportunity and freedoms based on secular law and not on religion that we have always been and hopefully will always be.
When answering the question put forth by Mr. Foertsch concerning "who are we?" I think more of the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty rather than the stingy, prejudicial, racist, Christo-centered closed-mindedness answer which Mr. Foertsch put forth.
Ronald Nicholls
Rehoboth Beach
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