The Alvin Advertiser (Alvin, Tex.), Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 4, 2016 Page: 4 of 12
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Editorial/Opinions
Views From The Right
Views From The Left
By Carm Hooper
B y Brenda Ma use
Will 'Old Glory1 yet wave?
The rise of the radical right
&
Local News
Your Way!
Letter to the Editor
• Phone • Tablet • Laptop • Desktop • Print
e
Alvin Sun & Advertiser
www.alvinsun.net
Alvin
V
Government Access
U.S. Representative
570 Dula Street
281-331-4421
The views expressed are those of the author, not
the Alvin Sun-Advertiser.
The views expressed are those of the author, not the
Alvin Sun-Advertiser.
DAN MOORE
DONNA HOPKINS...
DAVID MONEY
STEPHEN COLLINS.
ALBERT VILLEGAS .
SHERI SAENZ
BRENDA GROVES ..
DARLENE HALL ....
BETTY CRAWFORD.
LINDA KNIGHT
MELISSA NOLASCO
tion, for example, and want to
go north on 288, you will have
to first go eastbound on 6 to a
U-turn location and then head
back westbound on 6 to access
the north ramp to 288. Imag-
ine an 18-wheeler having to
make that maneuver. Six and
Adrian Gaspar,
Manvel
President
Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington, D.C. 20500
(202)456-1414
comments@whitehouse.gov
US. Senator
John Cornyn
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510-5922
(202) 224-2934
5300 Memorial Drive, Suite
980
Houston, TX 77007
(713) 572-3337
Fax: 202-228-2856
comyn.senate.gov/public/
UJS. Senator
Ted Cruz
B40B Dirksen Senate Office
Building.
Washington, D. C. 20510
(202) 224-5922
312 Cannon HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5951
6302 W. Broadway,
Ste. 220
Pearland, TX 77581
281-485-4855
olson.house.gov
State Senator
Larry Taylor Dist.ll
P.O. Box 12068
Capitol Station
Austin. Texas 78711
(512) 463-0111
174 Calder Rd. Ste. 151
League City, TX 77573
281-332-0003
State Representative
Dennis Bonnen
Room CAP 1W.6, Capitol
P.O.Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
(512) 463-0564
122 E. Myrtle
Angleton, TX 77515
(979) 848-1770
dennis .bonnen @
house.state.tx.us
State Representative
Ed Thompson Dist. 29
1400 N. Congress Ave.,
E2.506
Austin, TX 78701
P.O.Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768-2910
(512) 463-0707
ed.thompson@
house.state.tx.us
Governor
Greg Abbott
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711
Info and Referral:
800-843-5789
Opinions: 800-252-9600
govemor.state ,tx .us/contact
PAGE 4A, THE ALVIN ADVERTISER, WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2016
This page is recyclable Tv
10:25AM
From the 1970s until recently, Republicans were
delighted to see their party energized by a movement
they considered to be ultraconservative. The religious
right has “steadily transformed the Republican party
from a basically secular, conservative, civic-minded
party to become the public face of legitimacy for the
otherwise alien values of the radical religious right,”
Webb wrote.
The religious right is not conservative, Webb says,
a fact that some true conservative Republicans have
begun to realize. Barry Goldwater declared that when
the religious right seized control of the Republican
Party, “Frankly these people frighten me. Politics and
governing demand compromise. But these Christians
believe they are acting in the name of God, so they
can’t and won’t compromise.”
Anew CNN poll indicates that 66 percent of Ameri-
cans, including moderate Republicans, think that the
Senate is obligated to at least provide Supreme Court
nominee Merrick Garland with a hearing.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, currently chaired
by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is charged with tak-
ing testimony and interviewing a prospective Supreme
Court nominee put forward by the president. Major-
ity Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Sen-
ate has vowed to deny holding confirmation hearings
for any nominee that President Obama puts forward.
Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Cruz both sit on the Ju-
diciary Committee.
They have been clear: they have no intention of lis-
tening to the will of the people.
That explains why our current crop of congressmen,
many of whom have sold their souls to D.C. lobbyists,
have refused to work across the aisles to fix our na-
tions’ pressing problems. By obstruction, they believe
they are doing God’s work.
Whenever a politician says that one of his priorities
is to guarantee your “freedom of religion,” watch out.
They want to guarantee that their brand of ostentatious
religiosity is allowed to erect religious memorials on
public property and they will proceed to take away
many of your freedoms and options.
They claim to be strict constitutionalists but they are
deliberately violating a citizen’s right to be free from
their extreme fundamentalism and they intend to tear
down the increasingly flimsy wall separating church
and state.
Until recently, those of us who believe in a more
loving God and prefer to live our religion daily with-
out proselytizing have depended on liberal groups to
defend us from the self-righteous demagoguery of the
religious right. But that’s not working, folks. If your
God is the loving, forgiving, tolerant God who in His
wisdom created Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, and Hin-
dus as well as Christians, it is time for us to take our be-
loved country back from hate-filled, intolerant zealots.
You CAN make a difference at the ballot box. Do
it for love.
U.S. Representative
Randy Weber Dist. 14 Pete Olson Dist. 22
510 Cannon House
Office Bldg.
Washington. DC 20515
(202) 225-2831
weber.house.gov
-XMEMBER
Tu2016
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION
288 will become like 518 and
288 in Pearland.
Emergency vehicles will ex-
perience greater difficulty ac-
cessing their destination, and
as 6 serves as an evacuation
route for inclement weather,
the center lane would no lon-
ger be available to expedite
traffic flow.
I requested the mayor and
the city manager to ask State
Rep. Ed Thompson for assis-
tance in talking with TxDOT
on our behalf to halt the cen-
ter divider project. The reply
I received from the city staff
said, “The mayor spoke with
Rep. Thompson at a meeting
last week and he told her that
he did not think there was any-
thing he could do to stop or
hold up the project by TxDOT.
Therefore, no item was includ-
ed on the agenda.”
I am very disappointed that
in my opinion no one wants to
help. Especially Thompson.
So to all of you who drive on
highways 6 and 288, prepare
for gridlock in the near future
thanks to the Texas Depart-
ment of Transportation.
I thought they work for us,
not us for them.
prevail?
At any rate, a brokered convention indeed ap-
pears to be in the future. Bernie Sanders is far less
likely to reach the magic number required for the
Democratic nomination on the first ballot. Why
isn’t he dropping out? Because, as Sen. Bernie
Sanders has said, he intends to remain in the race
and gamer as many votes as possible in order to
show the percentage of Democratic party voters
who agree with his stance on the important issues.
He intends, by doing so, to make an impact for the
stand of those Democratic voters when the Party’s
platform is written and voted upon at the conven-
tion.
Were Trump to not reach the magic number and
the nomination go to one of the other candidates on
a subsequent vote, could not Trump use the same
logic as Sanders in order to see the Republican par-
ty platform conform to the stand which his cam-
paign put forward on the issues during the primary
and thus strengthen the Republican platform which
the chosen candidate would have to espouse and on
which he would have to run?
The contention within the Republican party is
like a heated disagreement between close family
members which evolves into name calling, fin-
ger flipping, and otherwise destructive behaviors.
Eventually, if reconciliation is not reached, such
contention can ultimately cause a rift within a fam-
ily, a party, and even a nation.
It is time to remember what is at stake in this
election. It is far more than four years of any one
candidate holding the highest office in our nation.
If we, as conservative Republicans, cannot co-
alesce around the one candidate who will be cho-
sen at the convention to represent the beliefs and
standards for which the Republican party has stood
for over 100 years, if we cannot come together
and make America see that our Constitution is the
foundation upon which our nation was built (de-
stroy a building’s foundation and you destroy the
building), if we cannot convince Democrats that
the extreme liberality expressed by both Clinton
and Sanders flies in the face of all our nation has
stood for over the past 270 years, we are staring
down the barrel of a smoking gun that will blow
the Constitution to hell, destroy this nation’s foun-
dation, ultimately see the United States of America
sink into oblivion, and our grandchildren grow up
in a country that did not exist prior to Jan. 20,2017.
| Atria Sow - Advertiser
1
A while back, I promised that I would not stray into
my colleague Brenda Groves’ Religion territory often,
and I misspoke. How can you address political issues
nowadays without talking about religion? Unfortu-
nately, you cannot. That’s a huge problem facing our
nation, and nowhere is it more of a problem than in
Texas.
In 2013, responding to a national telephone survey,
37 percent of adults indicated they attended church al-
most every week. The results of a similar online poll
about the same time put the figure closer to 18 per-
cent. Researchers said the variance was caused by the
tendency of people to over report behavior considered
“good” when they were talking with a person. Both
studies agreed that regular attendance is higher among
women and couples, seniors, and people with college
degrees.
Despite declining regular church attendance, 85
percent of Americans consider themselves Christians,
and many may be influenced by the “radical religious
right” in politics.
Blogger Michael Webb wrote a fascinating essay
several years ago called, “The Rise of the Radical
Religious Right and the Breakdown of Democracy in
America.” I accidentally stumbled across it online and
found it eye-opening.
Webb asserts that most Americans think that the
religious right shares the same values as they do. In
fact, he claims, they do not. They have a very different
ideological perspective, Webb adds, and consider the
average American’s views as irrelevant. Most Ameri-
cans believe that people should be free to do as they
please as long as they are not harming others and that
everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
The religious right does not agree with those views.
They believe those values are worldly, secular, and
wrong. Furthermore, Webb writes, the idea of compro-
mise is alien to the beliefs of the religious right. They
think that a belief comes from God and is eternally true
or it comes from Satan and is therefore false.
“In fact,” Webb writes, “fundamentalist Christians
believe that Satan (considered a real being) uses reason
to deceive the sinful human mind. Reason is bad, faith
is good.” Some followers of the religious right feel pity
for their more moderate Christian brethren, but many
despise moderate Christians for being “lukewarm” in
their faith.
A marked difference, according to Webb, in the
moderate Christian and the radical is that the former
believes that most people are motivated to pursue hap-
piness, while the latter believes the only reason we are
put on Earth is to do the will of God. The radical right
has successfully taken over the Republican Party. Ted
Cruz, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Marco Rubio are
vocal adherents.
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It appears that with his having won all five pri-
maries April 25, Donald Trump is almost sure to
win the Republican nomination. The same goes for
Hillary Clinton for the Democrats. It is clear that
only a brokered convention will grant the nomi-
nation to Ted Cruz, and only the most dangerous
brokered decision will give it to John Kasich. But,
these are unusual times. The 1956 Republican
Convention was the last truly brokered conven-
tion in my memory; but that convention and the
primary election that preceded it were never pub-
licized as this year’s primaries have been or as the
convention will be. If there was no protestation
from the candidates then, and no protestation from
the voters in 1956, what is making the difference
today? Were not the voters back then “disenfran-
chised” as it is declared today by Trump they will
be if he doesn’t win the nomination, even if he does
not have the required 1,237 delegates when all the
counting of primary votes has been done? Or were
we a more refined society that believed that rules
were rules and that when we had not prevailed by
granting one candidate the majority of votes then
wiser heads should then prevail?
To hear the former Speaker of the House John
Boehner use such language to describe Senator
Cruz is appalling. After all, did not the former
speaker resign because of differences within his
own House/Party members? Not only did he resign
as speaker, he resigned his congressional House
seat, packed his bags, “took his ball” and went
home! He who would not stand and fight for what
he believed in when the odds were against him has
the audacity to bad-mouth Cruz, calling him “Luci-
fer” and a “son of a b ”! It would appear that
the former leader of the Washington Establishment
Elite has shown us exactly what they think of the
United States senator from the great state of Texas!
I cannot help but wonder if, should Mr. Trump
achieve less than the required 1,237 delegates as
a result of the primaries, and doesn’t win on the
first ballot (because delegates are bound to vote for
the primary winners in their respective states), but
does win the nomination on a second ballot, are the
rest of us who have voted for Cruz to be allowed
to feel “disenfranchised”? Or will we realize that
the rules are the rules, and that wiser heads should
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Dear Editor:
TxDOT will soon begin
construction on a raised con-
crete center divider on SH 6. I
see this as a source of gridlock
at the intersection of SH. 288
and 6. If you are on the south
side of 6 in the Shell gas sta-
Click here
to view
our website
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Money, David. The Alvin Advertiser (Alvin, Tex.), Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 4, 2016, newspaper, May 4, 2016; Alvin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1251048/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Alvin Community College.