This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015

The known and unknown

Jim Sandefur’s rebuttal to my letter on the Ocmulgee National Monument presents a good picture of white man’s ignorance of other cultures and their way of life. He admits there are historians who do not have a clear view of the native Indian way of life and then proceeds to present the view according to Sandefur. Fact is, in much of the time period he speaks of, hundreds of years, should be thousands when there was no written records, only pictures in stone.

I am not historian, but not so dumb to fall for stories not backed up by science. And the history he reads can only be written by the white man. Maybe this is why an Indian from the Creek Nation was recently allowed to revise a third-grade book. Storage of food was uncommon with nomadic tribes, although used by some in the Pacific Northwest, and Coastal Indians, according to research done by Jaded Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor of geography. And no one can prove the Indians ran herds off cliffs just for the bite to eat. But yes, after the settlers gave the Indians guns and whiskey they did a lot of the same stupid things we do today.

— Fred Gunter

Macon

Question and answer

Question: Why is your pope wearing a necklace and using a walking stick with Jesus hanging on the cross? And why display a giant cross with Jesus suspended from it whenever he preaching if Catholics believe Jesus has risen?

Answer: You see the Israelites who were roaming around in the wilderness became disillusioned and began voicing displeasure with the way Moses and God were caring for them. Their ungratefulness brought fiery serpents among them causing great suffering and deaths. They begged Moses to ask God to save them from the serpents for they had sinned. God instructed a serpent resembling the ones biting them be made and after attaching it to a wooden pole; raise it up for all to see. They were told those who looked upon the image and believed would be saved — Numbers 21:1-9.

Jesus told Nicodemus, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the son of man must be lifted up; so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life” — John 3:14.

Moses kept the bronze serpent affixed to the pole and constantly and prominently displayed it as they marched toward the promise land, “Lest they forget.” Like Moses, the Crucifix (The image of Jesus affixed to the cross.) is constantly and prominently displayed in Catholic churches, homes, schools, hospitals, on jewelry and publicly when possible, so that we and the world never forget.

— Travis L. Middleton

Peach County

Wants another try

Being a former mayor and black makes C. Jack Ellis a primary contributor in my paper. Ellis is so negative about white leadership he begs for a response. I think Ellis served two terms, though it seems like five. He did nothing about the blight, the city dump or, for that matter, he just made race relations a living nightmare. In his pathetic selection of areas that need blight resolution, he failed to point out just who caused all of those areas to become blighted. He has never dealt with helping the enormous drop out rates of his constituents from school. He never reduced drug use or its ever-expanding sales. He did travel a lot. His voters need to think.

We all know he is positioning himself to run for another office. There are several strong young men and women of both races who have a positive outlook and are motivated to make Macon-Bibb more than a blighted, uneducated, crime and drugged-out city that currently is on many national derogatory lists. New business is locating all around us. Seems the only way we get any business is through outlandish financial rewards.

— Joe Hubbard

Macon

Laughable

Thanks for publishing “The Enlightenment keeps On winning” by James Haught. You can almost take it into the future with “They tried to halt the legalization of marijuana, but they lost.” “They tried to preserve the death penalty, but they lost,” etc. The bottom line is that conservatism in the South is almost always dead wrong if not downright evil. I laugh when I hear a Georgia senator talking about race relations today just like someone from Massachusetts would, when there is no doubt in my mind that this same person would have been advocating the lynching of Judge Bootle in 1961.

— Jim Sandefur

Lizella

This story was originally published September 30, 2015 at 8:34 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015 ."