Letters | The reverend & the writer

IN HER May 23 column, Carol Towarnicky came not to praise the Rev. Jerry Falwell, but to bury him. As I wasn't a serious supporter of Mr. Falwell, I have no argument with her on that point.

But then Ms. Towarnicky went off on a few tangents that need rebuttals.

First, she connected Falwell's rise with what she terms "conservative talk radio [that] broadcast[s] disinformation without challenge."

Sorry, but what do you call National Public Radio? That's publicly funded "disinformation" from the liberal viewpoint. When liberals tried to challenge conservative radio the old-fashioned capitalist way, Air America was a business failure and the butt of jokes even among liberal pundits. And what of the "unchallenged" liberal TV of the Big 3?

Second, she equated "radical secularism" with "a government that adheres to the First Amendment." Wrong again.

If the government adhered to the First Amendment, Christian crèches and Jewish menorahs could stand side-by-side in the public venue without lawsuits from the radically secular ACLU butting in.

It is only through years of "unchallenged" liberal intervention that the First Amendment has been perverted as a means to quash any expression of God, whether in a public venue or the privacy of our homes.

Edmond J Angiolillo

Philadelphia