We’re creating our own theocracy

Most of us deplore the sinister influence some imams of the Middle East wield over constituents, inspiring them to hate Americans and Jews, to become warriors for Allah and even suicide bombers.

With the professed influence of evangelical pastors in getting their congregations to vote and work for the election of the “moral” candidate, George W. Bush, who himself says God has called him to this role, we are getting dangerously close, as a nation, to the same type of theocracy as we see in the Middle East. Our homegrown imams, rather than urging the death of their opponents, back the death of our nation’s progress on such issues as global warming, efficient and sustainable use of finite resources, equality of justice and opportunity for all citizens and others.

We seem to be reverting to the monolithic theocracy of the Puritan colonies where forward-thinking idealists such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished from the towns of their more God-fearing – and non-thinking – peers. Our founding fathers, who fresh from the English debacle under Cromwell carefully crafted our Constitution in ways they thought would prevent such an eventuality, must be spinning in their graves!

BENITA HELSETH

Lake Stevens