Readers Write: August 4

Buchanan’s column has white supremacist tone

Pat Buchanan’s column, “Alone in the world perhaps,” Opinion, July 14, seems a camouflaged “white-supremacy-Christianity” advocacy. He is concerned about homogenization of cultures and Christianity becoming “a dying faith.”

Unfamiliar with broader perspectives from classics such as Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man,” Buchanan’s claim that our civilization, “rooted in Christianity,” has exclusively made “the greatest contributions to the ascent of man” is dubious. The Nobel-laureate William Durant once argued the “threatened liquidation of Christianity’” was overcome by “roots” from the early Islamic rationalists. The evolution of any civilization is not a straight line; ours is a Greco-Judeo-Christian-and-Islamic civilization.

And Buchanan mentions, “Once Europe went out to convert, colonize and Christianize the world.” Fifteenth-century Papal bulls went further: “invade, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and other enemies of Christ — and reduce them to perpetual slavery, appropriate all possessions and convert them to their use and profit.” Buchanan ought to convey some understanding for the “grandchildren of the colonized people” (who) come to “guilt-ridden Europe to demand their share of the inheritance.”

S.M. GHAZANFAR, ACWORTH

Wikipedia of baseball deserves honor

Congratulations to John Schuerholz for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 30. It is fitting that he is recognized for his 50-plus years in baseball, his talent and expertise in building a winning team. When Schuerholz arrived in Atlanta in 1990, he gave the fans, and the city, the excitement we had never seen from our sports teams and we had it for 14 consecutive years. He is the Wikipedia of baseball. His love, passion and respect for the game are on display every time he is interviewed. I can think of nobody more deserving to be in Cooperstown.