Copyright berkshireeagle
To the editor: The United States was founded by men with great vision. They revered science and knowledge. Given the ideals for which they fought, would they today be castigated as "woke"? While some of the founders didn't attend college, they believed in learning. Now, education is labeled "elitism" and facts are denied. We now hear of returning to a Christian nation, ostensibly as our Founding Fathers wanted. Yet in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, God the Creator is mentioned but not the Bible. John Adams said the U.S. was "not, in any sense, founded on Christianity." Thomas Jefferson wrote of "a wall of separation between Church & State." Conspiracy theories and junk science are replacing scientists and research. The majority of soldiers during the Revolution died not by combat but from diseases like flu, measles, etc., as did their children. George Washington made it mandatory for all soldiers to get the smallpox vaccine — the only one available. I think those learned men would've advocated for vaccines, which have all but eradicated those diseases. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has impugned serving women as part of a "feminist agenda." He recently ended the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, founded in 1951, for the recruitment and retention of women. In 1976, the integration of women as equals to men into military institutions such as West Point was signed by President Gerald Ford. Those were not exactly feminist eras. Washington allowed freed Black Americans to fight and welcomed the services women provided the troops. A few even fought. It was British troops on our streets through the Quartering Act that was a final push for independence. How would they react to our own military now acting as police to our citizens? Coincidentally, only those areas that didn't vote for the president. The Founding Fathers founded a nation, not nationalism. So I ask: Would the freedoms of speech and the ideals that the founders envisioned be embraced today, or dismissed as woke, thus ending our great country at its inception? Maureen Pinna-White, Pittsfield
