Letter - They really speak of conformity

To the editor:

How curious that what we regard as the lower chamber in our Congress, the House of Representatives, has become in actuality not unsimilar to the British House of Lords standing as champions in this case not just for a superior upper class in rank but in accumulated wealth. On the other hand, our Senate in Washington, D.C. has, under democratic control, come to represent an equivalent House of Commons much like the British Parliament: champions for the poor, the destitute, the disenfranchised.

It wasn't until after World War I that the power of the House of Lords was broken and England finally disengaged itself from the absolute power of the nobility and wealthy landowners.

In World War I the British nobility still filled the officers' ranks while the underclasses served as the grunts. But that proved to be enough for those of lower rank and so post war they shook themselves free from the overweening power of the wealthy uppercrust and their toadies in the clergy. No wonder that today only about 10 percent of the English attend church on Sunday.

Only the strict separation of church and state has kept religion alive and well in the United States but at present there is a concerted effort by the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptists to use the Constitution and the states to enforce their particular religious doctrines; forcing such views on the general population.

Whenever the church and state have gotten in bed together in the past, persecution, excommunication, heresy trials, sitting in stocks and even burning at the stake have become popular forms of thought control by these religious zealots. They speak of freedom but they really mean conformity and suppression of the individual conscience.

Lee Paulson

Glenwood, MN

Tags: opinion, letter