Tuesday, March 21, 2006

LTE: Lift the Sunday Hunting Ban

Sent in the below letter to the Asheville Citizen-Times on the controversy over the NRA proposal to lift the ban on hunting on Sundays. This is a modified version of my earlier comments on the radio on this subject.
I believe in limited government. That means that the government is given a very small range of action and I get to decide the rest. Why would anyone need to impose their religion on me in order to preserve their traditions? Is hunting a legal activity? If that's true, then by what right does the government restrict my exercise of a legal activity on Sundays? Is this a public safety issue? Is this a cost or budgetary issue? Is national security at stake? No, it is purely religious. If any person's religious tradition is popular then surely that person does not need to use the government to impose their religion on me in order to maintain their tradition. There are some good traditions and some bad traditions. Some traditions should be preserved and some traditions deserve to be chipped away at. I believe that using the police power of the government to impose religion on a free people in a pluralistic society is a bad tradition.

I received a reply from the editor indicating that this letter would run.