To the Editor;
Recently, Rep. John Atkins posted some distasteful remarks about me on a well-read local Internet information network. The remarks were picked up and read on the air by a local radio talk show host and treated as fact.
By doing this, Rep. Atkins has proven my point that he is continuing his slide into liberalism. He has lowered the Del Pointe debate from the academic level to the personal attack level, used solely by the radical left wing. I, however, will continue on the high road but will take a moment to respond to his personal attack even though it seems wrong that I must divulge publicly my career with Bodie’s Dairy Markets to do so.
The Bodie’s Dairy Markets chain of six stores was established, owned, operated and sold by my father, Bodie. I was his employee for 30 years. He alone established the product line and ignored my requests to remove any products, including the lottery tickets that Rep. Atkins wrote were “polluting our community.” For example, when in 1997, Wawa (the regional leader in the industry) removed lottery sales from all of its stores, I wanted Bodie’s Dairy Markets to follow suit but was admonished for the thought. I plead guilty to the sin of working hard, for many years, behind the counters of my father’s convenience stores. Using Rep. Atkins’ logic, I am guilty of “polluting our community.”
Likewise, in Rep. Atkins eyes, there are loads of other cashiers in convenience stores, drug stores, supermarkets and liquor stores just as guilty. During the many years I sold lottery tickets I personally saw the horrible effects that gambling has on innocent peoples’ lives. Our state government is as guilty as I am for having placed the sinful stumbling block of lottery sales before them in the first place. For this reason and for the reason of my faith, I am against any expansion of gambling in Delaware and therefore Del Pointe.
In personally attacking me, Rep. Atkins has won my argument for me.
He wrote that “Bodie’s stores were polluting our community” by selling lottery tickets. Yet he is in favor of the new Del Pointe gambling casino that would further the “polluting (of) our community.” Will he condemn the builders and employees of Del Pointe as people “polluting our community” as well someday?
How have we gotten to a point where an elected official publicly attacks, on a personal level, a private citizen for that citizen’s personal stance on an issue? This is being played out on a national level every day. No wonder no one wants to speak out against government’s wrongdoings. We elected these officials to lead us, not attack us and they should lead us down a good and moral path, not a path of sin, no matter how much we beg them for it. Just because the majority of people want something does not make it the correct and moral thing to do. If, for instance, a vote was taken back in the 1840’s whether or not to abolish slavery, the majority of people would have voted in favor of keeping it. Would that have made slavery the correct and moral thing to do? The majority of the people of Germany thought Hitler was right; did that make the Nazis correct and moral? Leaders should do the right thing, not the politically expedient thing.
How many of our leaders are only concerned about getting re-elected and worship a God that looks just like a dollar bill? God gave these leaders their authority to lead us and they will answer to God someday for the abuses they have rendered upon us. Please pray for our state and for our nation.
