SORRY BROTHER ALEX, YOU'RE OFF ON A FRINGE

By Juan Montoya
It was often said that the last thing you wanted to do was to get in an argument with a newspaper guy because he was sitting on a barrel of ink.
The same might apply to getting in a religious argument with an ordained minister, as with the Rev. Alex Resendez, whose letter to the editor of the Brownsville Herald was published in today's newspaper.
There is  no denying that Resendez is a devout Christian, and that his faith is sincere. But the leaps of logic and knee-jerk reactions to events involving President Barack Obama border on the maniacal.
In so many words, Resendez says that Obama is the anti-Christ for saying we're not only a nation of many cultures, but also a nation of many faiths.
Resendez says that with that statement, Obama has "changed every good rule of law" and states that since all presidents placed their hands on a bible, they were all "bound by its laws and the Ten Commandments of god."
"But now this chief dictator president has changed what our founding fathers made America to be, after many years of hard work."
Well, Rev. Alex, not quite.
All presidents swear to obey and uphold the U.S. Constitution, not necessarily the tenets in the bible. And as far as the United States being "America," well, let's not forget that this country occupies a northern section on the American continent. No country can claim the name "America" for itself, although that doesn't keep chauvinistic usurpers from trying.
And as for religious, take George Washington, the very first president of this country, as an example. When he was first sworn in and made his inaugural speech, he didn't refer to Jesus Christ, or Jehovah, or any specific culture's god. He referred instead to a "creator," a faith-neutral term that didn't refer to any specific culture or religion. Does that make him an anti-Christ, too?
Call me a nitpicker, but Columbus was not here to "teach and civilize" the natives he encountered in the New World. He was sent to find a way to the riches and spices of India and China by the Catholic kings of Spain. Just a few years after his arrival here, he had virtually decimated the native population.
And he had Queen Isabella issue an edict that in effect established the slave trade in the New World. By demanding a tribute in gold from each native forced to pan the streams and work in the mines, these God-fearing Spaniards virtually sealed the fate of these peaceful natives, literally working them to death.
Therefore, an edict from this Christian queen was needed to enslave what natives that were left under the justification that they refused to believe in their "true god" and that they may have been cannibals (Carabs). So when the need for more warm bodies were needed after a particular island's population was killed, they simply labeled the inhabitants of nearby islands "Carabs" and enslaved them.
If that was the Spaniards' way of bringing the wholesome effects of love for your fellow man and civilization, someone should have told the natives to flee from their saviors.
I can appreciate a bit of satire and sarcasm, as our three readers of this blog can attest. But Resendez's assertion that Obama will pass a law making it legal for you to marry your dog or horse implies that that the president is a proponent of bestiality, and to me that goes way over the line in a rational argument.
Resendez then prophecises that god will raze this country like he did biblical Sodom and Gomorrah because Obama is "protecting perverts." But all Obama is doing – who by the way is not the chief of staff, but rather the commander-in-chief – is upholding the law as defined by the Supreme Court, the very thing that he and the justices promised to do when they placed their hands upon the bible.
"America (the continent?) was a Christian nation," Resendez states. "Don't let the devil fool you."
Demonizing the president of the United States may be a sure-fire way to gain the plaudits of adherents who hate Obama, but to say that "only an anti-Christ can fool all Christian lawyer fools" defies logic.
If Resendez believes in "science and the Holy Bible," may we suggest that he exercise his god-given common sense and take full advantage of modern chemistry and theology? Maybe some Prozac and one or two chapters of Proverbs?