LETTERS

It doesn’t mean that

We learn that a Tennessee judge’s order forbidding a woman from naming her 8-months-old son “Messiah” has been overturned by another judge’s ruling. I believe the first judge’s view, that “Messiah” is a title that is held only by Jesus Christ, is plainly erroneous. In ancient Israel, a king was inducted into office through being anointed with oil; that made the king the Lord’s anointed-in Hebrew, masiah, which became messias in Greek and Messiah in English.

In the Bible, the Lord even addresses King Cyrus of Persia, who liberated the Jews from exile in Babylon, as his anointed (messiah). That is striking indeed when we bear it in mind that King Cyrus was not a Jew but a Gentile, and likely an adherent of the Zoroastrian religion.

When I was a youngster, the hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” excerpted from a long poem by James Russell Lowell, was widely sung in churches. Included in that hymn are these lines: “Some great cause, God’s new Messiah/Offering each the bloom or blight/And the choice goes by forever/Twixt that darkness and that light.” But “God’s new Messiah,” apparently bordering on heresy from a Christian perspective, was changed to “some new decision” in the 1955 Presbyterian Hymnbook, and to “some great decision” in the 1974 nondenominational Hymns for the Living Church.

RICHARD FROTHINGHAM Little Rock

Transformation due

I believe the president was 100 percent correct when he made the statement in his Navy Yard memorial speech that “it ought to be a shock to all of us as a nation and as a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation.”

And that transformation should be a complete change in his lack of leadership and accountability. I believe what happens now is his fault, not that of someone who went before him. Things should have been updated on his watch so that similar events did not happen again, but they were not. People should have been fired. They were not.

All he seems to want to talk about is gun control when that is not the problem. I believe that if the security company had done its job, Aaron Alexis’ clearance would have been pulled; if the guards had done their job that morning and searched his bag, he would not have been able to carry in a shotgun.

The people are telling Barack Obama the transformation they want. If he will listen, I think he will hear that they don’t want Obamacare and they want to keep the Second Amendment, as it is the amendment that secures the foundation of our nation.

As a supposed expert on the Constitution, he must be well aware of that. Is that why he seems so determined to excise it? Does he wish us to be like Asia, the Middle East? Does he wish to rule by executive order?

A.J. HANSON North Little Rock

Trash white helmets

I’m sorry. They just don’t look like Arkansas Razorbacks in those white helmets. One of the longest traditions in Razorback history is red helmets with the white hog.

Can we go back to red, both at home and away? Those white helmets will look great on the scout team.

MITCH LaGRONE Maumelle

Help correct blunder

First, many thanks to Mike Masterson for his continuing follow-up on the CAFO tragedy being inflicted on our beautiful Buffalo River area. I would normally only contribute to my church affiliation and various charities, but an exception is being made in order to send a check made out to Earthjustice, c/o Barbara Miles, P.O. Box 250954, Little Rock, 72225.

I would hope many of you reading this letter would also send your tax-deductible contribution, which will help the organizations who have gotten together to file a federal lawsuit to put a halt to the possible destruction of this sensitive environmental area.

It would be nice to see our governor, Mike Beebe, step forward and investigate how one of our state agencies could have allowed this. At the very least, I believe those responsible should be either relieved of their positions or reassigned to positions where they could never have the poor judgment to make such a terrible decision ever again.

I urge all of you readers to give whatever support you can, be it monetary or word of mouth, to help reverse this gigantic blunder.

DONALD STRUZYK Springdale

Is that war necessary?

In the 1980s when I worked as an interviewer for the Social Security Administration, I assisted a young Marine in claiming disability benefits. He was wheelchair-bound, paraplegic and required oxygen as a result of America’s invasion of the island of Grenada.

He was a tough guy. He didn’t complain, but I had to wonder whether that war was necessary. The United Nations didn’t support us in that war, as they have voted not to support an attack on Syria. The British parliament and NATO don’t support it either.

I’m not a military man, but I don’t think pinpoint strikes by Tomahawk Cruise missiles are so pinpoint. I think it could mean arms and legs of civilian noncombatants being blown off, and probably a widening conflict, extending to Lebanon and Israel and beyond.

We should clean up the messes in our own country instead of interfering in a civil war in which we have no vital interest. I get the feeling many of our people are in a kind of denial, or war fatigue, ready to just keep their heads down and accept whatever happens. Correspondence to your representatives could get some attention.

I suppose the young Marine is still in a wheelchair if he is still alive.

GLENN PICKEL Fayetteville

Editorial, Pages 17 on 09/28/2013

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