Editor,
Some friends of mine and I were discussing the fact that our state legislature has now made the Bible the official state book of Arkansas.
Now, we understand that it is very good that the legislature wants to help us citizens know about and have various “state stuff” that will increase our economy and prestige around the world, stuff like:
- Arkansas state bird – Mockingbird Mimus polyglottos (1929)
- flower – Apple blossom (1901)
- motto – The People Rule (1907)
- song – Arkansas: You Run Deep in Me (1986)
- 5. insect – Honey bee (1973) dying off, killed by pesticides, etc.
- flag – a complicated symbol ( red field background with a white diamond centered in the middle bordered by 25 white stars on a blue band with, originally, three blue stars clustered in the middle signifying the three countries Arkansas had belonged to: France, Spain and the United States, until 1923 when a fourth blue star was added to show that Arkansas was a member of the Confederate States of America.)
Other pertinent facts: The territory was admitted to the Union in 1836 and withdrew into the Confederacy in 1861.
In May 18, 1911, 140,000 people celebrated the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock with a parade that took two hours to pass the viewing stand.
Arkansas is ranked as 48th in poverty (my birth state Mississippi was 50th, the two states perennially ranking at the bottom).
Approximately 86 percent of Arkansans are Christians with different denominations vying for the truer truth; less than one percent Jewish; 14 percent non-religious; and less than one percent Muslim (there are Pagans and Wiccans but officialdom does not count them.)
So. We feel historically safe and protected in Arkansas even if 2,4,5-T, a derivative of Agent Orange is still sprayed on hardwood trees, herbicides are sprayed along waterways, power lines and roads, an oil pipeline is planned through the state, fracking may be next, et.al.
We do not need separation of church and state. We officially have The Good Book.
T.A. Laughlin