In response to Mr. Herman’s article in the AJC (11-28-08), I would say, “God forbid that our middle schoolers be corrupted with the idea of respect for a creator.”

Therefore, we must not only erase such words from the blackboard, we must not allow them to read the Declaration of Independence where it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And of course, we must not take them on a tour of Washington, D.C., lest they read the words at the Washington Monument where George Washington took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, asking that the Bible be opened to Deuteronomy, chapter 28 and then immediately following the oath delivered his first inaugural address:

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States of America. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

And, the students must not learn that eight months later George Washington proclaimed the first national day of Thanksgiving in the United States:

“... that we then may all unite unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country ... for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of governments ... for the civil and religious liberties with which we are blessed ...”

And, they most certainly should not be allowed to read George Washington’s journal where he penned, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.”

Further, they must be forbidden to enter the Jefferson Memorial lest they read the words of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote these words in 1785, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”

While we are at it, why don’t we just censor all the words of our Founding Fathers lest our students become corrupted with the thought that most of the leaders who founded our great nation believed in a divine creator and the need to respect Him? Surely we wouldn’t want them to know that learned men believed such things.

Keith Turner

Fayetteville, Ga.

Turn4723@bellsouth.net