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Yes, I do — get letters. Plenty of them.
Letters to the Editor, letters (or phone calls or e-mails) that come to me.
For those who are critical, the criticisms break down into two distinct categories. The first are those that directly challenge the information contained in my columns, or the arguments I make based upon that information. The others are those who simply call me names or make ad hominem attacks against me.
I have made it a point to always respond to those who challenge my facts or arguments, if only to make it clear that I was not fudging the facts or making political or other arguments using fabricated data.
On the other hand, I have studiously avoided responding to the ad hominem attacks. But some themes have emerged which I would like to address, if only to answer the same assertions I continue hearing.
These themes break down into the following accusations (followed by my responses):
“I am a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Glenn Beck acolyte or wanna-be, rehashing what they say to try to follow in their footsteps.” Well, to begin with, Rush rose to national prominence just over 20 years ago. I first heard his name, and started leaning about his radio program, somewhere around 1990. At the time, I was already writing conservative columns, and getting them published — long before I ever became familiar with the term “Ditto-head” or knew what it meant. Hannity and Beck entered the public’s national consciousness much later.
In addition, it should be noted that — while I agree with Rush and Hannity on most issues, and with Beck on many things — I have fundamental disagreements with all three of them on various issues. As an example, none of them are, like me, an evangelical Christian, someone who believes that man is separated from God by his sin and can only be saved by God’s grace through personal faith in Christ. Neither Rush nor Hannity nor Beck believes this. They subscribe to works-based religions which teach that man is somehow perfectible and can be good enough, or be made good enough, to merit (earn) salvation through some combination of good works, religious rituals and sacraments.
“I only write about Obama, the same stuff week in and week out.” Like all other columnists throughout the country, whether liberal or conservative, I do write a great deal about Obama. He is the president, after all. But not every week — in fact, not anywhere near that. Both this week’s and last week’s Good Fight columns were indeed about Obama [the Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 editions]. Of the 10 columns before those two, only one was about Obama. The others were on subjects such as Israel, Occupy Wall Street, Herman Cain, Tim Tebow, Joe Paterno/Penn State, “Chaz” Bono, and even Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, I do — get letters. Plenty of them.
Letters to the Editor, letters (or phone calls or e-mails) that come to me.
For those who are critical, the criticisms break down into two distinct categories. The first are those that directly challenge the information contained in my columns, or the arguments I make based upon that information. The others are those who simply call me names or make ad hominem attacks against me.
I have made it a point to always respond to those who challenge my facts or arguments, if only to make it clear that I was not fudging the facts or making political or other arguments using fabricated data.
On the other hand, I have studiously avoided responding to the ad hominem attacks. But some themes have emerged which I would like to address, if only to answer the same assertions I continue hearing.
These themes break down into the following accusations (followed by my responses):
“I am a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Glenn Beck acolyte or wanna-be, rehashing what they say to try to follow in their footsteps.” Well, to begin with, Rush rose to national prominence just over 20 years ago. I first heard his name, and started leaning about his radio program, somewhere around 1990. At the time, I was already writing conservative columns, and getting them published — long before I ever became familiar with the term “Ditto-head” or knew what it meant. Hannity and Beck entered the public’s national consciousness much later.
In addition, it should be noted that — while I agree with Rush and Hannity on most issues, and with Beck on many things — I have fundamental disagreements with all three of them on various issues. As an example, none of them are, like me, an evangelical Christian, someone who believes that man is separated from God by his sin and can only be saved by God’s grace through personal faith in Christ. Neither Rush nor Hannity nor Beck believes this. They subscribe to works-based religions which teach that man is somehow perfectible and can be good enough, or be made good enough, to merit (earn) salvation through some combination of good works, religious rituals and sacraments.
“I only write about Obama, the same stuff week in and week out.” Like all other columnists throughout the country, whether liberal or conservative, I do write a great deal about Obama. He is the president, after all. But not every week — in fact, not anywhere near that. Both this week’s and last week’s Good Fight columns were indeed about Obama [the Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 editions]. Of the 10 columns before those two, only one was about Obama. The others were on subjects such as Israel, Occupy Wall Street, Herman Cain, Tim Tebow, Joe Paterno/Penn State, “Chaz” Bono, and even Sherlock Holmes.
Before that, I wrote seven columns, mostly about Obama. Yet in the 10 weeks before that, I wrote columns about Sarah Palin, David McCullough (history), Anthony Weiner, Fox News, the Casey Anthony murder case, the New York Yankees, and Harold Camping’s Rapture date. Only two of those columns were about Obama, and one of them centered primarily on Michele Bachmann.
And on and on it goes, as far back as anyone would care to track it.
Moreover, the Obama columns all have new and timely information in them. This week, for instance, involves Obama’s purposely stepping all over New York City’s annual Christmas tradition and his opposition to including FDR’s historic D-Day prayer at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. Last week, his recent decision on the Keystone pipeline and the Congressional subpoena of Jon Corzine.
“I claim to be a Christian yet I am very judgmental or ‘holier-than-thou’ in my writing.” Well, according to my beliefs, a Christian is someone who is a sinner saved solely and entirely by God’s grace — His unmerited and undeserved favor based upon Christ’s death for me on the cross as payment for my sins. The fact that I am a sinner saved by God’s grace only (there is no other way), and that we are all part of a fallen race (humanity), is something I have written, said, preached and taught in my studies many hundreds, probably thousands, of times through the years. I really can’t make it any clearer than that. This is the antithesis, the very opposite, of being “holier-than-thou,” or even being able to think that way.
I do not target personal failings of people but rather national policy or attempts to transform our culture or laws by politicians or those in the national spotlight using (misusing, actually) their influence in a way that either does affect or would affect all others. So, for example, even though I was accused in letters and other communications of attacking “Chaz” Bono for her lifestyle or personal choices, I made it very clear in the two columns I wrote that such was not the case. My sole concern was the attempt to transform culture and laws.
As I wrote in the first of those columns: “Perhaps now LGBT activists will admit that this is a public policy issue, that what they’re interested in (and have been all along) is first of all acceptance which leads to legal status and the restructuring of our laws. It is not about what adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, something which neither I nor the vast majority of Christians could care less about” (edited slightly for word space in the newspaper, but printed in full online).
And in the second: “That’s what this debate is all about — restructuring society by government fiat, the forced acceptance of LGBT lifestyles, under penalty of law. It is not about the private lives of people in the LGBT community or any of those lifestyles, which I made perfectly clear in my previous column. No one wants to interfere with their lives, living arrangements, social contracts, etc., but neither do we want the catastrophic fallout we know will come from redefining marriage, LGBT-izing the military and so on.”
So keep the letters and communications coming, even the critical ones, but please leave these over-worn and, I would argue, false allegations out of them.
tom3264@msn.com, or go to tom’s Facebook page to send a message
