"Fifth District Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount, should stop letting 19-year-olds draft his letters to constituents.

Sure, Goode’s press secretary said the congressman wrote the letter that’s been shot around the world the past week or so.

Maybe he did.

The sentiments are Goode but the words are rather crude.

Fear or dislike of "many more Muslims" and "many more persons from the Middle East" are the themes that wander through the letter amid insinuations that a new congressman from Minnesota could be a vanguard for more like him who might threaten traditional American values.

Since Goode sent it out to hundreds of constituents, the letter about "the Muslim representative from Minnesota" and "the Koran" he wishes to use at his swearing-in ceremony has touched off a firestorm of controversy. He owns the words now whether he originally wrote them or merely must claim and explain them.

The thoughts expressed in the letter don’t exactly fit the facts unless someone reading it really stretches and loosely associates the word Muslim with the words "Middle East" and the inability to "preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is an African-American native of Detroit who traces his family roots in the United States back to 1742. The first Muslim in Congress, Ellison converted to Islam in college and wishes to use the holy book of his religion in a private swearing-in ceremony.

Religious freedom is one of the most basic traditional American values, and Goode’s letter awkwardly alternates between attacking that freedom and blasting away at American policies that allow in too many people from Middle Eastern nations.

Many Americans with fine traditional values have come to this nation from Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Jordan and other nations in that region, but they are a tiny minority in Goode’s Greene County-to-Danville district, as are Muslims.

You don’t see Goode attacking rednecks, Baptists, Methodists or even Episcopalians of the right persuasion.

The Episcopal Church is undergoing its own painful split with conservative elements flocking to the banner of a Nigerian bishop of the Anglican persuasion who argues that gays should be imprisoned.

South of Nelson County in the majority of Goode’s sprawling rural district, which has been hurt by the loss of jobs, nothing in the letter causes him much political heartburn.

People like straight talk, and many Americans dislike Muslims, so attacks on Goode for being rude miss the point of his rather pointed attack on immigration leading to citizenship.

Immigration leading to citizenship is a basic American value.

It has been that way ever since Europeans of various Christian denominations started killing off Native Americans.

What Goode advocates is the rather un-American slamming of the door on Mexicans, Muslims, or anyone else who talks funny.

Scratch that last one. The congressman doesn’t go that far, or the Goodes might have been barred at the door, sent back at the Statue of Liberty and told that those who do not speak the King’s English might wish to spend a few years listening to the House of Lords before knocking again.

On second thought, perhaps Goode’s slight twang is the correct modern version of the King’s English.

Whatever the speech patterns and accents, people have been coming to America for hundreds of years to avoid religious persecution. Accepting those people is a great traditional American value without any litmus test for which religion they may bring to America.

Freedom of religion and immigration are two of our nation’s strongest values and traditions. They often go hand in hand.

If a black college student from Detroit converts to Islam and later is elected to Congress from Minnesota, that seems more like success in pursuit of the American dream than a threat to any freedoms or values.

It may be natural for many Americans to fear Islamic fundamentalists the past five years, but a growing population of Americans of the Muslim faith is part of a national strength.

Goode and Ellison might even get along and like each other if they shake hands and get to know each other before either swears at the other’s holy text." (Bob Gibson, Political Notebook, The Daily Progress, December 24, 2006)

Contact Bob Gibson at 978-7243 or bgibson@dailyprogress.com.