Prager’s sin argument goes astray

Re “The left finds an avenging angel in Katrina,” Current, Sept. 11

Conservative apologist Dennis Prager sets up a false argument: that some people find the Bush tax cuts and ignoring of global warming akin to sin. He then attributes that position to a mysterious entity he dubs the “secular left” (as if liberals cannot be religious), ties it to Hurricane Katrina and smugly knocks it down. Truly an exercise in futility.

As usual, his piece ignores the only fact that matters: The Katrina disaster finally exposed a staggering level of mendacity and ineptitude at the federal level, and people no longer feel safe. Care to spin that, Dennis?

HARRY SHANNON

Van Nuys

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Prager is incorrect in equating the secular left’s assessment of fault and responsibility for the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina with the religious right’s pronouncement of divine judgment of sin. Secularists, of the left or the right, base our judgments of fault on the analysis of evidence and reason, not on the supposed intentions of a supernatural entity. Katrina illustrates that American environmental policies and budget priorities are wrong, not because they violate the arbitrary interpretation of millenniums-old fables as divine will, but because they have demonstrable and observable negative consequences to humanity that those on the left find unacceptable in comparison to a rationally determinable set of alternatives.

Prager would like for his readers to believe that “leftism is itself a religion” in order to obscure this fundamental difference, but the political pronouncements of the left are at least based in realism, rationality and the application of human intellect.

MICHAN CONNOR

Los Angeles

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Prager makes the assertion that leftism is a religion. If that is so, who is the leftist God? Is it “fairness,” “equality,” “compassion” or “competence”?

Or how about “inclusion without prejudice”? Sign me up!

MICHAEL HENDRIX

San Antonio, N.M.

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I can’t believe that Prager stated that “traditional religion is guilty of a long list of sins.” This is the first time that I can agree with him.

HARRY SHRAGG

Los Angeles