Letters to the Editor

Public money and the ACLU

While the body of the Wednesday letter skews the matter, the headline, “Military memorials and religious symbols,” defines completely the issue at the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial. Contrary to what the American Civil Liberties Union would have everyone believe, those like the American Legion that are committed to protecting that monument — and others like it — focus on no single religious symbol.

Moreover, the wool that is being pulled over the public’s eye on this matter, as the ACLU’s Jeremy Gunn contends, is being tugged by the ACLU. By Mr. Gunn’s words one would think that the ACLU has concern for the taxpayers’ dollars. They do. But not in saving them; only in collecting them.

In attempts to destroy, dismantle or otherwise do away with religious symbols on veterans’ memorials the ACLU has collected, with the help of federal judges, millions of dollars from towns and cities across the nation. While the check may be written by the city, the court-awarded payment is coming from the wallet of the taxpayer to the coffers of the ACLU.

That’s why Legionnaires are working for passage of the Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2007 in the 110th Congress. The bill would preclude judges from awarding taxpayer paid attorney fees in these cases to the ACLU and other lawyers supposedly working “pro-bono.”

The American Legion is, naturally, a strong advocate in support of veterans memorials regardless of the religious symbols those memorials may bear. The greatest concern, of course, lies in protecting our National Cemeteries from those who, like the ACLU, would wipe from those white marble headstones any and all vestiges of religion.

JOSEPH CAOUETTE

Chairman

National Americanism Commission

American Legion

New Hampshire

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